Sunday, December 28, 2025
Home Blog Page 1007

Former NRA President: Let Medical Marijuana Patients Have Guns

Brendan Bures
-
0
Former NRA President: Let Medical Marijuana Patients Have Guns

One wrinkle often lost when debating the rights of medical marijuana patients is gun ownership. In part, it’s because these two issues might seem on opposite sides of the aisle. But if you trust the word of the former NRA president, that might not be as true as you think.

David Keene wrote in the Washington Times Wednesday, the federal government’s Schedule I drug classification for marijuana causes significant problems for gun owners. Though medical marijuana is legalized in 30 states, registering for a medical marijuana card prohibits that person from owning firearms.

Via Washington Times:

The Schedule I classification has caused real problems for gun owners in states that have legalized its use for medical purposes because the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives defines anyone with a medical marijuana prescription as an admitted drug user prohibited by definition from owning, possessing or using a firearm. In some states federal law enforcement officers have threatened to go after either gun owners with a prescription or firearms dealers or private sellers who dare to sell them guns.

Keene cited instances where those with medical marijuana cards ran into trouble. One card-carrying Nevada woman attempted to buy a firearm from a Carson City retailer back in 2011, but the ATF had recently put out notice that licensed dealers “may not transfer firearms or ammunition to” individuals with medical marijuana prescriptions.

Just last year the Honolulu police contacted every local registered gun owner with a marijuana prescription. They notified those individuals they had to “surrender their guns and ammunition to the police within 30 days.” As Keene noted, the police later rescinded that notice, but it reminded gun owners with medical marijuana prescriptions how fragile their position was.

“Since gun purchasers must sign a form swearing they are not habitual drug users, a holder of a marijuana prescription cannot both answer the question honestly and buy a firearm today from a gun dealer anywhere in the country,” Keene wrote.

Because of this ongoing concern, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf notified residents last month that the police wouldn’t be taking away the guns of those with medical marijuana prescription. “People should not have to make that choice,” Wolf said at the time.

Keene echoed that sentiment, stating, “Trading a constitutional right for pain relief is a choice no one should have to make.”

Aspen Is Selling More Marijuana Than Alcohol Right Now

Terry Hacienda
-
0
Aspen Is Selling More Marijuana Than Alcohol Right Now

Aspen, a tony Colorado ski town famous for expensive restaurants and celebrity sightings, is becoming known for something else these days: Marijuana. Sales figures for 2017 show that the cannabis stores topped liquor stores in revenue.

According to the Aspen Times, the city’s finance department reported legal marijuana retailers recorded $11.3 million in revenue in 2017. Liquor stores generated $10.5 million in sales, marking the first time in the city’s history that marijuana outpaced alcohol in total sales. There are six marijuana retailers and five liquor stores in Aspen.

The finance report also shows that marijuana sales jumped 16 percent over 2016’s total of $9.7 million. Among Aspen’s 12 retail sectors tracked by the Finance Department, the cannabis industry experienced the largest growth rate in 2017. Overall, Aspen generated $730 million in retail revenue in 2o17, a 2 percent bump from the previous year.

“I think it’s meaningful for a couple of reasons,” Matt Kind, a Boulder cannabis entrepreneur told the Aspen Times. “One in particular is when people are visiting Aspen and adjusting to a high altitude, some don’t drink for that first couple of days. And I think people are looking for something different from alcohol, which is essentially poison, and marijuana is botanical. I don’t say that with judgment, but you feel some lingering effects with alcohol.”

A 2017 study conducted by Georgia State University showed a 15 percent decrease in alcohol sales in states with medical marijuana programs. “Our findings clearly show that these two substances act as strong substitutes in the marketplace,” Georgia State economics professor Alberto Chong told the Aspen Times. “This implies that rather than exacerbating the consequences of alcohol consumption — such as an increase in addiction, car accidents or disease risk — legalizing cannabis may temper them.”

Standoff With Tiger Ends When Cops Realize It’s A Large Stuffed Animal

Maria Loreto
-
0
Standoff With Tiger Ends When Cops Realize It’s A Large Stuffed Animal

In Scotland, a farmer called the police in a panic, claiming there was a tiger near his cowshed and that he needed immediate assistance.

The New York Post reports that the police arrived shortly after the phone call was made, and that they had a nearly one-hour standoff with the animal. It was around this time when they realized that the tiger was just a large plushy.

Bruce Grubb, the 24-year-old farmer who made the phone call, was throwing a house party when he saw the “tiger” near his property and called the police. His cows were pregnant and he was terrified they would be eaten.

Grubb claims that he wasn’t the only one who was scared. He says the first officer who arrived on the scene was so terrified, he didn’t even want to get out of his squad car.

The local authorities claim that, even though the call was bizarre, they did their jobs and called local parks to check if any animals had escaped. They also published on their Facebook account that the phone call wasn’t a prank and that it was made with genuine good intent.

Watching This Particular TV Show Is As Good As Meditating

Amy Hansen
-
0
Watching This Particular TV Show Is As Good As Meditating

A new study has found something pretty incredible. Mediation and mindfulness aren’t much better than watching a David Attenborough documentary. If you aren’t a fan of Planet Earth, Attenborough is known for narrating stunning nature documentaries and is a pretty big deal in Britain.

According to The Times (by way of The Independent), researchers at Coventry University, along with scientists from New Zealand and the Netherlands, found no convincing evidence that mindfulness and meditation promote open-mindedness or empathy any more than jogging and watching TV.

The study concluded that methods such as mindfulness show no measurable effect beyond what their teacher tells someone to expect, comparing the technique to religion and warning against “implicit magical beliefs” in meditation.

So there you have it. Your next meditation is just a Netflix sesh away:

New Study Suggests Today’s Marijuana Is Too Strong

Amy Hansen
-
0
New Study Suggests Today’s Marijuana Is Too Strong

A new study finds that states where marijuana is legal might face a health crisis if they don’t limit marijuana’s strength, which has increased as cannabis becomes more mainstream.

The study, conducted in the Netherlands, examined the level of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) over a 16-year period. Researchers found that marijuana potency more than doubled between 2000 and 2004, followed by a spike in the number of people seeking treatment for marijuana-related problems.

It found time-dependent associations between THC and first-time treatment entry at lags of zero to nine years, with the strongest association at five years.

According to the study:

The number of people entering specialist drug treatment for cannabis problems has risen considerably in recent years. Across Europe, there was a 53 percent increase in first-time clients between 2006 and 2014, and cannabis has now superseded opiates as the primary problem drug. These changes highlight a concerning increase in population markers of burden and morbidity attributable to cannabis.

Use of cannabis products with high-THC content has been linked to poor mental health and addiction. According to the study, a cross-sectional online survey found that use of cannabis with high-THC content was more strongly associated with cannabis dependence than lower potency forms of cannabis and that the association was found to be stronger in younger cannabis users.

The study finds that THC concentrations have risen considerably in the USA, UK and worldwide in recent decades:

For example, a study of illicit cannabis samples in the USA reported that THC concentrations rose from a mean of four percent in 1995 to 12 percent in 2014. More recently, a dramatic rise in potency was reported within two years of legal sales in Washington State, where extremely high-potency extracts (70 percent THC) now comprise around 20 percent of purchases.

The Post posits that both government can and should place limits on marijuana’s strength “just as it does other addictive products, thereby protecting public health as well as saving the taxpayer the future costs of treatment and other needed health-care services.” The study echoes that sentiment, concluding that in “a rapidly changing cannabis climate, it is essential that policy makers consider the effects of new legislation on cannabis potency and the incidence of cannabis-related harms.”

Marijuana And Fatty Liver Disease: How The Plant Can Help

Trey Reckling
-
0
Marijuana And Fatty Liver Disease: How The Plant Can Help

Scientists may have just shown that frequent cannabis use is a predictor much lower risk of developing the most common liver malady in the world: Fatty Liver Disease.

While much discussion is had about American obesity and its detrimental health consequences, a fatty liver can be particularly problematic. Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, NAFLD, affects nearly 1 in 3 Americans. It can lead to even more dire health concerns, such as steatohepatitis, fibrosis, cirrhosis and cancer of the liver.

Hyperglycemia (high blood sugar levels), high levels of fat (especially triglycerides) in the blood, obesity and diabetes mellitus  are risk factors for developing NAFLD. Interestingly enough, cannabis users have already been shown to have lower risks for the latter two conditions.   

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Medical School have published the first study of its kind examining the relationship between cannabis use and NAFLD and the results are dramatic.

A study of the medical records of a huge sample size (5.8 million patients from 3,000 hospitals in more than 40 states) sought to determine if cannabis use affected the propensity to develop the disease. It turns out that there may be a correlation, and it gets significantly stronger for heavy users.

Researchers determined that the study findings, “revealed that cannabis users showed significantly lower NAFLD prevalence compared to non-users.”

How significant was the reduction? The more frequently patients used cannabis the less likely they were to have NAFLD. People who reported occasional cannabis use were 15 percent less likely to develop NAFLD. Regular users were 52 percent less likely than non-users of the herb.

The study noted some obvious shortcomings. The percentage of people self-reporting their cannabis use to healthcare professionals is likely to be lower than the prevalence of use other studies suggest. In this sample a mere 2 percent of patients reported to be non-cannabis users. That number is far lower than the 12 percent of Americans who are users as reported by a recent Gallup Poll. There was also no specific information about what strain, strength of concentration or mode of delivery of cannabis was available from this data.

Despite the limitations, the researchers call for more molecular level studies of this relationship. With initial findings like these, grant money will likely be easier to come by for that purpose. That could be very good news for the millions of people worldwide trying to put the skinny back in their liver for a healthier life.

 

Single People In This Age Group Are Having The Best Sex

Amy Hansen
-
0
Single People In This Age Group Are Having The Best Sex

You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but sometimes you don’t need to because they already know them all.

According to a new study, singles in their 60s are having the best sex. And, that can be attributed to several reasons: older people know what they like in the sack, they no longer care what people think, and they’re often coming off a long term relationship which may have lacked sex.

More than 5,000 people in the US took the Singles in America survey (now in its eighth year). Results show that a person’s sex life reaches its peak in the 60s, and pegs single women as having their best sex at 66 and men at 64. This complements other studies that show the majority of older married couples are having sex well into their 80s.

The New England Journal of Medicine found that that majority of couples aged 75-85 are having sex multiple times a week, reporting that “54% of sexually active persons reported having sex at least two to three times per month, and 23% reported having sex once a week or more.”

Sex therapist Dr Madeleine Castellanos tells The Daily Mail Online that sex is more satisfying for singles in their 60s because they’re experienced enough to know what gets them off, saying, “As you get older you know what you like physically.”

She says many men and women prefer 60s sex because they are no longer married and feel uninhibited in bed. Plus, many of them were with partners who didn’t fulfill their sexual needs or desires.

Many of them had a much more narrow range of experience limited by who they were with.

She also says the older you are, the less limited you are about what other people think, including your partner.

The Singles in America survey was funded by Match and conducted by Research Now.

Will Marijuana Legalization Help Democrats Win Red States?

Brendan Bures
-
0
Will Marijuana Legalization Help Democrats Win Red States?

Even though most Democrats are weary of taking cannabis reform to the federal level, it appears that Dems in traditionally red states have used the idea of marijuana legalization as a key platform issue. And it looks like it could be working.

According to Politico,this election cycle has featured Democratic candidates prominently favoring changing federal marijuana laws. Senate races in Texas and Nevada, as well as House races in Kentucky, West Virginia, Indiana, and Pennsylvania all include pro-cannabis Democratic challengers running against Republican incumbents who stand on the opposite side of the issue.

Via Politico:

Not so long ago—like maybe last cycle—a Democratic challenger in a state this conservative [like Indiana] wouldn’t have been caught dead making an unqualified endorsement of a drug federal authorities still consider as dangerous as heroin by categorizing it as Schedule 1. But attitudes about marijuana, not to mention state laws, have changed so quickly and so broadly across the country that Democrats even in deeply red states like Indiana not only don’t fear talking about the issue, they think it might be a key in 2018 to toppling Republican incumbents.

These Democratic challengers believe the numbers are on their side, especially in light of Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ staunch anti-marijuana policies that seem keen on reigniting America’s War on Drugs.

Those numbers are particularly poignant in states like Indiana ravished by the nation’s opioid crisis. A 2016 poll showed that 73 percent of Indiana residents approve medical marijuana legalization. The power of promoting medical marijuana legalization in states, like Indiana, that have been adversely affected by opioids can be seen in West Virginia. Richard Ojeda won a state senate seat in large part through his championing of medical marijuana. Once victorious, he then sponsored the medical marijuana bill that made West Virginia the 29th state to legalize its use.

No money was spent by marijuana advocacy groups, who were stunned by Ojeda’s successful efforts. Ojeda is running for Congress in the 2018 election.

“There wasn’t a single penny spent, and we won,” Ojeda told Politico. “We did it because I got up and started speaking about it. And then the phone lines [in the legislature] lit up because the people of West Virginia know.”

Whether these new red-state Democrats will succeed remains to be seen. But so far, they’re making a dent by giving their people what they want.

German National Police Group Advocates To Decriminalize Marijuana

Brendan Bures
-
0
German National Police Group Advocates To Decriminalize Marijuana

A national organization representing German police believe cannabis and its consumption should be decriminalized throughout the country.

André Schulz is the head of the Association of German Criminal Officers (BDK). The organization includes around 15,000 police detectives and Schulz said the group wants a “complete decriminalisation of cannabis consumers.”

Schulz believes that criminalizing marijuana stigmatizes consumers and that it “allows criminal careers to start.” Speaking with German tabloid Bild, Schulz also stated that he doesn’t think Germany’s national ban on cannabis will last much longer.

The prohibition of cannabis has historically been seen as arbitrary and has not yet been implemented in an intelligent and effective manner. In the history of mankind there has never been a society without the use of drugs; this is something that has to be accepted.

Since last March, medical patients can acquire medical marijuana through their doctors in the country. However, German officials have stated they have no intention to make the drug recreationally legal.

“If we want to deal with the problem of the illegal market we need to legalise and responsibly regulate the production and supply of cannabis and other drugs as well, and there are many police forces making that argument,” Schulz said.

“It’s time for the Government in the UK to listen to those voices in the police and other experts and begin a meaningful debate on legalisation in the UK as well.”

Washington State Gets Ready To Take On Feds Over Cannabis

Daniel Shortt
-
0
Washington State Gets Ready To Take On Feds Over Cannabis

Washington State Attorney General, Bob Ferguson, appears ready to defend his state’s marijuana program against Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump. Last week, Ferguson spoke to the Columbian’s editorial board about upcoming challenges for the Evergreen State. Naturally, the topic of marijuana came up.

Ferguson stated that his office was prepared for a legal fight over marijuana legalization in Washington, although he said, “we hope it doesn’t come to that.” Due to recent actions by US Attorney General Sessions, however, it seems likely that it “could come to that.”

If it does, Ferguson told the Columbian that he would not hesitate to act:

Hypothetically speaking, right, there could be a business that’s licensed in Washington state selling marijuana that’s following state law. Let’s assume they’re following state law to a T—that’s important—and the feds go in and try to shut that business down, they seize the marijuana or the proceeds. If in my view, we’ve got a legitimate business, playing by our rules here in Washington state and the federal government comes in to try to shut that down, we’d be interested in that.

Ferguson also said that he would be willing to get involved if the federal government takes any “adverse action” against a marijuana businesses compliant with state law.

Earlier in January, Sessions rescinded Obama-era guidance regarding federal enforcement priorities for states that legalized cannabis and replaced it with the single-page Sessions Memo. Now, US Attorneys across the country, like Washington’s Annette Hayes, are authorized to use their own discretion when deciding whether to prosecute federal marijuana crimes in their respective states.

Prior to Ferguson’s interview, the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board sent out an email on behalf of his office asking for Washington residents to share “if they experienced a change in your business practices or customer relationships that you believe is connected to the Sessions Memo.”

Clearly, this issue has been on Ferguson’s mind for a while. In his interview, Ferguson also emphasized the fact that Washington repeatedly reached out to Sessions to discuss Washington’s cannabis law and policy. In each case, Sessions declined.

Ferguson also pulled no punches in deriding Sessions for sending him and Governor Jay Inslee a factually inaccurate letter on Washington’s marijuana program, which failed even to acknowledge that the state had merged its medical and recreational programs:

I think the first thing he accused us of was not having a system that had combined our medical and recreational marijuana systems together, relying on that old report—but, of course, since that report came out, we had! To me that’s embarrassing that the US attorney general, on an issue of that importance, is writing a letter to a governor and attorney general of another state and he’s just got his facts wrong. That’s a problem, I think. I think this is a problem in trying to move forward on these issues.

Ferguson wisely said that he was not willing to discuss legal strategies, but acknowledged that a legal fight could center on “whether federal law preempts state law when it comes to marijuana.” Under the US Constitution, federal law preempts state law when the two directly conflict, but there are strong arguments by states like Washington that their adult-use cannabis programs are not in “positive conflict” with federal law. We explained how that works here.

Washington has consistently proven that it is not afraid to challenge the Trump administration. Sessions brought great uncertainty to the marijuana industry, but Washingtonians should feel confident that their Attorney General will fight to protect the will of Washington voters. Hopefully, Ferguson never has to take up his promise, but it’s reassuring to know he is willing to do so.

Daniel Shortt is an attorney at Harris Bricken, a law firm with lawyers in Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Barcelona, and Beijing. This story was originally published on the Canna Law Blog. 

1...1,0061,0071,008...1,460Page 1,007 of 1,460

Don't Miss Your Weekly Dose of The Fresh Toast.

Stay informed with exclusive news briefs delivered directly to your inbox every Friday.

We respect your privacy. Unsubscribe anytime.

The Fresh Toast is an award-winning lifestyle & health platform with a side of cannabis. We work hard each day to bring uplifting and informative information about culture, weed, celebrity, tech and medical marijuana.

© Copyright @2020