Tag: the war on (some) drugs

Study Finds ‘No Evidence’ That Medical Marijuana Causes Cognitive Impairment In Patients With Chronic Health Problems

Findings of a study examining marijuana’s neurocognitive effects “suggest that prescribed medical cannabis may have minimal acute impact on cognitive function among patients with chronic health conditions”—which may come as a relief to long-term cannabis patients who are concerned about potential neurological drawbacks of the drug.

Authors of the report, published last month in the peer-reviewed journal CNS Drugs, wrote that they found “no evidence for impaired cognitive function when comparing baseline with post-treatment scores.”

To conduct the study, researchers had 40 people in Australia self-administer a single dose of medical marijuana in a laboratory setting, following instructions on the product label. Participants were then tested on an array of neuropsychological metrics—including multitasking, pattern recognition memory, reaction time, rapid visual information processing and spatial working memory, among others—and surveyed on their subjective experience.

“The absence of evidence for cognitive impairment following medical cannabis self-administration was surprising,” the study says, “given prior and substantive evidence that non-medical (‘recreational’) cannabis use reliably impairs a range of cognitive functions. At the same time, these findings are consistent with two systematic reviews published in the last year that suggest that medical cannabis, when used regularly and consistently for a chronic health concern, may have little if any impact on cognitive function.”

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States Where Marijuana Is Illegal Typically See Higher Rates Of Treatment Admissions, Federal Study Says

Despite fears by critics that marijuana legalization would lead to sharp increases in problematic use, newly published data from the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) shows that states where cannabis sales remained illegal typically had the highest rates of treatment admissions for the drug.

The data, which was published last week and covers 2021, show admissions to substance use treatment services among people aged 12 and older who go to state-licensed facilities. All told, the SAMHSA report presents findings from nearly 1.5 million admissions nationwide over the course of the year.

Of all the tallied admissions nationwide in the new Treatment Episode Data Set (TEDS), 10.2 percent were for marijuana or hashish as the primary substance, according to the SAMHSA data. That’s the fourth most common substance after alcohol (34.8 percent of all admissions), heroin (20.2 percent) and methamphetamine (13.5 percent). It’s just above “other opiates/synthetics” such as pain medications or fentanyl (9.1 percent) and cocaine (5.6 percent).

In terms of states with the highest admissions rates where marijuana was the primary substance, on a per capita basis, the top 10 states were South Dakota (151 per 100,000 residents), Iowa (144), Connecticut (141), South Carolina (119), Minnesota (110), New York (95), Wyoming (85), Georgia (84), North Dakota (81) and New Jersey (80).

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Ohio Senate Committee Advances Bill To Eliminate Marijuana Home Grow, Reduce Possession Limits And Raise Taxes—Days Before Legalization Takes Effect

An Ohio Senate committee has given initial approval to a newly unveiled proposal to fundamentally alter the state’s voter-approved marijuana legalization law that’s set to take effect later this week.

The legislation being advanced in the GOP-controlled chamber would eliminate a home grow option for adults, reduce the possession limit, raise the sales tax on cannabis and steer funding away from social equity programs and toward law enforcement—along with other amendments concerning THC limits, public consumption and changes to hemp-related rules that stakeholders say would “devastate” the market.

During a 30-minute hearing on Monday, the Senate General Government Committee voted 4-1 to attach the cannabis legislation to an unrelated House-passed bill on alcohol regulations. As revised, the legislation contains several provisions that Republican leaders have previewed in recent weeks since voters approved legalization at the ballot last month, but it also goes further, for example, by proposing to criminalize people who grow their own cannabis at home.

Senate President Matt Huffman (R) said he’s aiming to pass it on the floor as early as Wednesday before it’s potentially sent over to the House for concurrence. The plan is to get the changes enacted on an emergency before the legalization of possession and home cultivation becomes legal on Thursday.

Advocates and Democratic lawmakers have already expressed frustration with the leaderships push to revise the voter-initiated statute. Republicans, including Gov. Mike DeWine (R), have insisted that voters were only supportive of the fundamental principle of legalizing marijuana without necessarily backing specific policies around issues such as tax revenue.

But while they’ve made that argument in the context of more incremental changes, the idea of eliminating home grow is likely to generate sizable pushback given its centrality to Issue 2. That could complicate its path to being enacted. An emergency clause would mean the bill would require a two-thirds vote instead of a simple majority to pass.

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Germany Delays Final Vote On Marijuana Legalization Bill Until Next Year

A final vote on a bill to legalize marijuana in Germany that was initially planned for this week has been called off amid concerns from leaders of the country’s Social Democratic Party (SPD). The delay means that action on the landmark proposal will be postponed until next year.

“It always has to be approved by the parliamentary groups in the end,” Dirk Heidenblut, an SPD member of Germany’s Bundestag who is responsible for the party’s cannabis policy, said in an Instagram post. “And if a faction leader, in this case the SPD, has concerns, then it cannot be set up yet.”

Despite the delay, Heidenblut added that as long as the measure advances by the end of January, the delay shouldn’t meaningfully impact the schedule for implementing legalization.

If lawmakers pass the bill, the early stages of reform—including home cultivation for personal use—would begin as soon as April.

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Former Michigan GOP House speaker surrenders to serve marijuana bribery sentence

Former Michigan House Speaker Rick Johnson has surrendered at a minimum-security federal prison camp in Minnesota to serve a 55-month sentence for pocketing bribes and corrupting the state’s marijuana industry, according to an inmate database updated Saturday.

The database shows Johnson, 70, among the 433 inmates at FPC Duluth near the western edge of Lake Superior. The prison is about 700 miles northwest of Lansing where Johnson was one of the most powerful Republican lawmakers in the state before becoming a lobbyist and chief regulator of Michigan’s marijuana industry.

That career ended in scandal after the politician from LeRoy received more than $110,000 in bribes from marijuana lobbyists and a businessman while serving as chairman of the medical marijuana licensing board from May 2017-April 2019. The illegal payoffs included repeated trysts with a sex worker who called him “Batman.”

Johnson had been ordered to surrender by Saturday after losing a last-ditch attempt to shorten his time behind bars and serve part of the sentence under house arrest as he recuperates from heart bypass surgery.

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Ahead Of Oral Arguments, Safe Drug Consumption Site Lawyers Call Out DOJ’s ‘Irreconcilable’ Legal Positions

With oral arguments set for Monday in a federal court case over a proposed Philadelphia safe drug consumption site, counsel for the would-be facility sent a letter to the judge in the case on Thursday calling out the Department of Justice (DOJ) for taking apparently contradictory legal positions.

In the Philadelphia safe consumption site case itself, the letter says, DOJ has argued that the harm reduction aims of Safehouse, the nonprofit attempting to open facility where people can use illicit substances in a medically supervised environment, are “socio-political” rather than religious.

In a separate case involving an Episcopal church in Oregon, however, DOJ recently filed a statement of interest arguing that “distribution of free meals to persons in need is ‘religious exercise’” that would be infringed by a local zoning ordinance.

Writing to Judge Gerald McHugh of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, DLA Piper attorney Ilana Eisenstein said the government can’t have it both ways.

DOJ’s arguments in the Oregon case, Eisenstein wrote, “demonstrate that Safehouse has adequately pled a substantial burden on its religious exercise.”

In other words, the letter asserts that if the government views handing out free meals to people in need as protected on religious grounds, it can’t simultaneously deny that harm reduction services could deserve similar protections.

“DOJ’s positions in that case are irreconcilable with its arguments here,” the letter says, “and confirm that this Court should deny the DOJ’s pending motion to dismiss.”

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Toxicology Identifies Cannabis in the Bones of Medieval Italians

Archaeologists excavating in a 17th-century hospital crypt in Milan, Italy, recovered the skeletons of nine people. Using tools of toxicology, they have now identified “the first archaeological evidence” of THC, the psychoactive component of cannabis, in human bones from the Modern Age.

The cannabinoids from cannabis, such as tetrahydrocannabinol [THC], one of the psychoactive properties associated with the plant, are stored in various tissues in the body, including hair and bones. A 2013 a study published in the journal “Drug and Alcohol Dependence,” found that THC can be detected in human bones “several weeks” after the last cannabis use. However, the associated detection technologies have changed – a lot – over the last decade.

The exact mechanisms of how cannabinoids are stored in bones, and how long they remain detectable, varies from person to person, and greatly depends on frequency of use, dosage, and individual metabolism. Bones, essentially act like a reservoir for cannabinoids, and their detection can be used in forensic and clinical settings to assess past cannabis use. But now, a team of researchers have identified THC in the 17th century bones of people buried under a hospital in Milan, Italy.

In a new study, Dr. Gaia Giordano at the University of Milan said that she her colleagues excavated and tested the skeletons of nine people from a 17th century crypt at Milan’s Ca’ Granda hospital. The bone samples were powdered, separated and purified, before being liquified and subjected to mass spectrometry, to identify the chemical components.

The results were subsequently analyzed using the tools of toxicology, the study of chemical substances in living organisms including humans. Toxicologists analyze how substances are absorbed, distributed, metabolized, excreted, and their toxic effects. Whether eaten or inhaled, cannabinoids are trapped and preserved after being absorbed into the bloodstream, and they are ultimately stored in bone tissue.

The team identified THC and cannabidiol (CBD) molecules within the thigh bones of a young man and middle-aged woman, who were both buried between 1638 AD and 1697 AD.

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Hundreds of Illegal Chinese-owned Marijuana Operations Taking Over Maine

Hundreds of illegal Chinese-owned marijuana growing operations have been popping up across Maine over the past three years.

On Tuesday, Nov. 28, local law enforcement shut down an illegal marijuana grow that was being operated in a building located behind a licensed marijuana cultivation facility in Franklin County.

Officers from the Wilton Police Department were assisting investigators from the Maine Office of Cannabis Policy (OCP) during a routine follow-up inspection of a licensed facility in Wilton when they raided the illegal operation, authorities said in a press release posted on social media.

“It’s a place that has been on the radar,” State Rep. Mike Sobeleski (R) told The Epoch Times, adding that he had visited the facility previously. The Republican lawmaker said he had learned about the raid just minutes before Tuesday’s interview with The Epoch Times to discuss the illegal marijuana operations being run by Chinese nationals throughout the state.

Earlier this month, a man identifying himself as the property manager told the Maine Wire that the building was being used to grow marijuana and that operators paid about $30,000 per month in rent.

He also reportedly told the news outlet that the facility was being run by four Asian men who claimed they were from New York, California, Washington, and Massachusetts.

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Top Federal Agency Promotes New Marijuana Research Center Amid Scientists’ Complaints About ‘Complex’ Study ‘Barriers’ Under Prohibition

A top federal health agency says it recognizes that there are ample concerns among scientists about how they’ve “encountered barriers that have hampered their research” into marijuana under federal prohibition, including “complex” federal regulations and inadequate supplies of cannabis.

That’s why the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is now seeking to resolve some of those challenges by standing up a Resource Center for Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research, an official said in a blog post on Tuesday.

NIH posted a notice of funding opportunity late last month, explaining how it’s seeking an entity to operate the center through a cooperative agreement in order to “address challenges and barriers to conducting research on cannabis and its constituents.”

To help facilitate that process, the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health’s (NCCIH) Patrick Still announced that the health agency will be holding a webinar on January 25 to provide potential applicants with technical assistance.

“There’s growing interest in potential therapeutic uses of cannabis and its constituents among both health care providers and the public,” Still, who is a program director for NCCIH’s Basic and Mechanistic Research branch, wrote. “Substances in cannabis have a variety of pharmacologic effects, and rigorous research is needed to understand their mechanisms of action and investigate their possible value in helping to manage health conditions.”

“However, investigators working in this field have encountered barriers that have hampered their research,” he said, pointing to feedback NCCIH received as part of a request for information last year.

“The barriers that many of them have mentioned include difficulty meeting complex federal and state regulatory requirements, problems obtaining cannabis products suitable for research, a lack of validated measures of cannabis use and exposure, and inadequate scientific infrastructure to support research studies,” Still wrote.

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Germany’s Top Health Official Defends Marijuana Legalization Bill Against Critics Ahead Of Next Week’s Vote

As German lawmaker prepare to vote on a revised marijuana legalization bill next week, the country’s health minister defended the reform against critics in the legislature, while briefly outlining next steps for a commercial sales pilot program. Meanwhile, one German state is signaling that it will pursue legal action to block the reform from taking effect within its borders.

At a meeting before the Bundestag on Wednesday, Health Minister Karl Lauterbach took a series of questions from members, some of whom oppose legalization and others who expressed interest in expeditiously enacting the reform.

At several points, he pushed back against lawmakers who suggested that legalization would send the wrong message to youth and lead to increased underage consumption, saying their arguments “misrepresented” the legislation, according to a translation.

“The fact remains that child and youth protection is carried out through education, and sales to children and young people remain prohibited,” Lauterbach said. “That is the only change we have made in this area: a tightening.”

“As part of this legalization, we are pushing back the black market,” he said. “The less of the black market there is, the lower the risk that our children will be brought into consumption through the black market.”

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