According to science, cannabis can be an alternative solution to trichotillomania, a hair-pulling disorder that affects more than 200,000 Americans annually.
Trichotillomania (TMM) is a disorder that involves pulling out of body hair. It isn’t just limited to scalp hair either — eyebrows, eyelashes and even arm hairs are not exempt. The disorder, which affects more than 200,000 Americans each year, is treatable, but let’s be real: traditional medications don’t always work.
However, according to science, cannabis can be an alternative solution to the compulsive disorder. This is good news considering the psychiatric disorder has no FDA approved treatments yet.
In a 2011 pilot study, researchers administered 14 females with a mean age of 33, with 2.5 to 15 mg per day of the cannabis compound dronabinol. This compound is usually used to treat nausea and vomiting in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy.
Photo by Mihaela Muntean/Getty Images
In the 12-week open label experiment, scientist collected data between November 2009 to December 2010. All the subjects underwent pre- and post-treatment assessments.
The study was one of the first of its kind to examine the effects of a cannabis agonist on trichotillomania and the results were pretty exciting. Researchers used the Massachusetts General Hospital Hair Pulling Scale (MGH-HPS) and measured success by the decreases or increases in the baseline score and endpoint score.
At the end of the study MGH-HPS scores decreased from a mean of 16.5 at baseline to 8.7 at the end of the study. In other words, the 12 subjects (2 had to drop due to unforeseen circumstances) saw a serious improvement in their TTM symptoms and 9 of those 12 subjects saw “much or very much” improvements.
Subjects received an average dose of 11.4 mg per day. The best part of the study is that none of the subjects reported serious effects on cognitive abilities.
In other words, people with trichotillomania may have found help in a very unlikely partner.
Many of us are battling anxiety right now, and it’s not easy. Here’s how you can manage your thoughts and feelings during stressful times.
For people who suffer from anxiety, stressful moments in time — like the ones we’re going through right now — can be especially taxing. Anxiety prompts fight or flight reactions from our bodies, something that’s natural and necessary for survival when faced with an immediate threat. The thing about anxiety is that you don’t have to be facing a lion in order to experience it.
It can be hard to pinpoint the moment when your anxiety gets of out control, which is why anxious people sometimes find themselves going through different scenarios in their heads, each one more unlikely than the next, yet all equally distressing.
To prevent these thoughts — or at least to manage them — it’s important to notice your personal patterns. Here are 5 things you can do to reign in an anxiety spiral:
Deep breaths
Deep breathing — or diaphragmatic breathing — can help you manage your anxiety since one of the symptoms that first affects us when spiraling is shallow breathing. Deep breaths, especially the ones pulled from your diaphragm, will oxygenate you and ground you in the present.
In order to learn how to use your diaphragm for breathing, put a hand on your chest and a hand on your stomach and start taking deep breaths. The hand on your stomach should move with each breath, while the hand on your chest should remain relatively static. Try these breathing techniques whenever you’re anxious.
Keeping track of your thoughts can help prevent anxiety spirals by learning what your trigger points are. Try to pay attention to your moods. Are you feeling irritated? Did someone else’s behavior stress you out? Noticing how you’re feeling in the moment will allow you to find what triggers your anxiety. Tracking behaviors is a very common and helpful thing to practice, allowing you to know yourself better and to avoid any sneak attacks by your feelings.
Do a physical chore
If you’re feeling anxious and jittery, try completing a physical chore, like cleaning the dishes, mowing the lawn or organizing your closet. These tasks allow a brief escape from your thoughts, creating some distance between yourself and the story that your brain is working so hard to tell you.
Depending on the type of anxiety you’re dealing with, you could also try other types of distractions, like watching a movie or listening to music. If you need something more engaging to keep your thoughts from running away from you, try playing a video game with headphones on. Video games ask of you to use your body and your brain simultaneously, which is why so many people find them as ideal distractions.
Try staying present
Experiment with different methods that help you stay in the moment, whether that’s closing your eyes or contracting and releasing your muscles. These techniques are very common for keeping you grounded and in the moment, something that can put a stop to anxious thoughts that are keen to distance you from what’s going on right now.
Independent consumer assessments, including online reviews and social media posts, fall outside the jurisdiction of the FTC, even if they contain health claims otherwise punishable if made by CBD companies.
If you read this blog and keep a close eye on the cannabidiol (“CBD”) industry, you know that the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) takes issue with advertising tools containing egregious, unfounded claims about the health benefits of CBD products. Yet, you might be surprised to read that the federal agency does not go after every actor that promotes the therapeutic value of these products. This post explains why.
The FTC is empowered under the Federal Trade Commission Act (“FTC Act”) to regulate advertising to protect the public from unfair and deceptive claims made in any medium. Under the FTC Act, companies must support their advertising claims with solid evidence. This is especially true for businesses that market food, dietary supplements, and other health-related products. The objective of the FTC is to ensure that consumers get accurate information about these products so they can make informed decisions.
In reviewing health claims, the FTC gives great deference to the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) – the agency tasked with regulating these products. The FTC follows the FDA’s determination of whether there is adequate support for a health claim to be made.
As we have written at length, the FDA treats any CBD products marketed as having therapeutic value as a drug. Drugs are tightly regulated and subject to FDA pre-approval for safety and effectiveness purposes before introduction into interstate commerce. With the exception of Epidiolex, no product containing hemp CBD has been approved as safe and effective for medical use.
Accordingly, to align with this FDA policy, the FTC mandates that any person who makes any health benefit claim about CBD products must possess and rely upon “competent and reliable scientific evidence.”
In simple terms, “competent and reliable scientific evidence” means tests, analyses, research, and studies conducted and evaluated by experts in the field that substantiate that the representation is true. Yet, given the limited number of scientific studies on the health benefits of CBD, virtually no advertiser making medical claims about these products could possibly defend its representations under the federal standards.
Photo by Oliver King via Unsplash
These standards, however, only apply to people directly involved with the advertising of these products. This means that independent consumer reviews, which are reviews made by individuals who have no connection to the product manufacturer or distributor, are exempt from such regulations. This explains why publications like Forbes and Vogue frequently release articles ranking “best CBD products,” which are filled with all kinds of medical claims.
This, of course, is premised on the assumption that these publications and their journalists are expressing their personal opinion and fondness for a particular CBD product and have no endorsement deal with any of the CBD companies whose products they are reviewing.
If these publications and journalists did have some sort of sponsorship or endorsement deal — let’s say, the journalists receive free CBD products from the company, then these journalists and the CBD companies would be subject to the FTC rules and would need to disclose their relationship. Regulators would view the journalists as part of the CBD company’s marketing program, which is essential in helping consumers evaluate the review and the quality of the product. In addition, the company would need to ensure that the journalists do not make any health claims that would open them up to enforcement actions by the FTC, which are no longer limited to issuing warning letters.
In sum, honest, independent consumer assessments, including online reviews, social media posts and video, fall outside the jurisdiction of the FTC, even if they contain health claims otherwise punishable if made by CBD companies. The primary goal of the FTC is to protect the public from deceiving companies which hold a financial interest in a product, not to silence people’s free speech.
This new method of collecting saliva eliminates the risk to those handling the samples and keeps front-line laboratory workers safe in the midst of a pandemic.
“Authorizing additional diagnostic tests with the option of at-home sample collection will continue to increase patient access to testing for COVID-19. This provides an additional option for the easy, safe and convenient collection of samples required for testing without traveling to a doctor’s office, hospital or testing site.” — FDA Commissioner Stephen M. Hahn, M.D
The potential to expand the availability and accessibility of an at-home saliva test to combat COVID-19 has taken a step forward. The test approval, in a boon to the process of serology (or antibody) testing, was announced by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in conjunction with Accurate Diagnostic Labs (ADL), the largest independent New York-New Jersey area testing laboratory.
The FDA announcement on May 8 was an extension to the emergency use authorization (EUA), expanding it to include the saliva test. The EUA bypasses the normal labyrinthine process of government approval and authorization. This strategically important approval expands beyond the already approved at-home tests using a nasal swab and saline.
“For the past month, we have focused on providing solutions to health systems, first responders, and essential employees,” said Rupen Patel, CEO of New Jersey-based ADL. “Completing these studies and receiving this approval will allow us to continue that mission while expanding our capabilities to begin to test more people that may be spreading the virus without knowing it.”
The Rutgers Clinical Genomics Laboratory received an expanded approval for their COVID-19 laboratory developed test; this is the first saliva test to win FDA approval. This will allow testing of samples self-collected by patients at home using the Spectrum Solutions LLC SDNA-1000 saliva collection device.
With the rapid spread of COVID-19, there have been several weeks of high risk exposure to the virus — a risk that resulted in the loss of thousands of lives (including hundreds of medical personnel), ensuring that the urgency of this step forward.
The new method of collecting specimens is the first-of-its-kind due to a unique way in storing the sample, explained Dr. Shaila Nayak, Medical Director of Accurate Diagnostic Labs. The design eliminates the risk to those handling the samples and keeps front-line laboratory workers safe in the midst of a pandemic.
Photo by fotograzia/Getty Images
As overall deaths from the coronavirus have passed the 100,000 mark, there are significant benefits to new specimen collection and serology breakthroughs; especially when the test mitigates biological hazards to laboratory workers.
The FDA authorization is limited to testing performed at the Rutgers Clinical Genomics Laboratory using their molecular LDT COVID-19 authorized test for saliva specimens collected using the Spectrum Solutions LLC SDNA-1000 Saliva Collection Device.
There has been a focused round-the-clock effort by all of the collaborating organizations and their research and medical personnel, together with the FDA to focus on not only finding new ways to combat the virus but add numbers to needed data patterns to understand its spread.
Hiking is a great summer activity on its own, but it’s especially satisfying when you add in a little extra.
Now that summer is upon us, it’s time to get back to one of the world’s best pairings: marijuana and the great outdoors. This simple pairing brings out the best in weed, getting you in touch with nature and allowing you to relax and enjoy your trek in surprising ways.
While there are many approaches to get high on a hike, some are less complicated and fumbly than others. We’ve compiled a brief list of things you should consider before going on your hike to make the process easier, safer and more fun. Here are 5 things to know before hiking with weed.
Pack all the necessary tools
Before you leave your house, make sure to pack all your necessary items in discreet and convenient places. If you’re taking a pipe, pack one that you wouldn’t mind losing or breaking, since accidents (tripping, falling, etc.) are common while hiking. If you’re planning on smoking a joint, make sure you’ve prepared it ahead of time and stored it somewhere that protects it and keeps the smell contained.
No matter the state where you live, cannabis is still considered a Schedule I drug, meaning that if you’re caught with it in a national park, you’re still breaking the law. Also, not everyone enjoys the smell of weed so be considerate of others and smoke in an area that’s secluded and private.
Pack water and snacks
You should always pack water when hiking, but you should do so especially if you’re considering bringing weed. Remember to pack your favorite snacks in case you get hit with the munchies and still want to be able to enjoy your hike.
No matter how experienced you are with marijuana, it’s really important to be with someone if you’re planning on consuming somewhere other than your house; you don’t want to get too stoned and then be unable to make your way back home.
If you’re an inexperienced hiker or if you’re trying out a new trail, being with a companion is even more important. It’s also more fun to converse with someone, high or not, while on the trail.
Don’t litter
After you’re done smoking, snacking and hiking, make sure to take your trash with you and leave the space as you found it. Remember that fires are particularly easy to start in the summer, never mind when you add in a half-lit roach to the equation.
Black Americans were four times as likely to get arrested for marijuana possession as white Americans in 2017, despite similar usage rates, Booker noted.
In a new interview with MSNBC, Sen. Cory Booker underlined racial disparities in marijuana enforcement as just one example of the failings in America’s current justice system. Booker’s response comes as Americans have protested against police brutality and social inequities in multiple cities this week following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers.
These protests highlight deep, institutionalized flaws in our current system, Booker stated, and require ongoing efforts by Americans to correct.
“I’ve seen this pattern play out where you see an uproar of outrage, but then we get back into a regular system where we don’t understand that this is not a sometimes thing,” Booker said. “This kind of racism, this kind of bigotry is so institutionalized that it puts so many of our fellow countrymen and women at risk every day.”
These disparities play out in issues like the enforcement of drug policies. One example, as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has noted, is the minimum sentencing gap between possession of crack and cocaine. Distributing just 5 grams of crack results in a minimum 5-year federal prison sentence. That same sentence is applied to anyone distributing 500 grams of cocaine.
“Because of its relative low cost, crack cocaine is more accessible for poor Americans, many of whom are African Americans,” the ACLU writes. “Conversely, powder cocaine is much more expensive and tends to be used by more affluent white Americans.”
Photo by Randy Shropshire/Stringer/Getty Images
Booker noted similar imbalances in marijuana enforcement, which disproportionately targets black Americans.
“There are no differences between blacks and whites for using the drug, but there was more marijuana arrests in 2017 than all violent crime arrests combined, and blacks were four times more likely to be arrested for it,” Booker said.
“Each one of those data points impact the lives of people that are being destroyed — can’t get a job, can’t get a loan from the bank — for doing things that two of the last three presidents admitted doing,” he added.
Booker has sponsored legislation that would legalize marijuana at the federal level. The bill includes social equity programs that include expunging the majority of marijuana-related arrest records. The National Organization for the Reformation of Marijuana Laws (NORML) released a statement earlier this week that while marijuana legalization will not solve racial injustice in America, it can be “an important part of this emerging discussion.”
England has released some measures intended to protect people from the coronavirus, prohibiting gatherings between people of different households.
The coronavirus continues to provide new challenges for governments around the globe. One of the most unusual cases comes from England, which recently released a rule prohibiting indoor gatherings of two or more people belonging to different “households.” This loose terminology means that people not living under the same roof can’t meet up with friends or acquaintances. Presumably, this includes sex.
Although the law is being called by media as a “sex ban,” the rule never specifically mentions the word sex, probably because of the outrage it would cause. The rule came into effect on June 1, under the Health Protections Regulations 2020 bill which defines the prohibited gatherings as “when two or more people are present together in the same place in order to engage in any form of social interaction with each other, or to undertake any other activity with each other.”
Sex, unless you live with your sexual partner, is implicitly included in these social interactions. And if you break this rule, you can be prosecuted.
“Changes to Coronavirus Regulations mean people can spend time outdoors, including private gardens and other outdoor spaces, in groups of up to six people from different households. However, everybody should act responsibly and continue to strictly observe social distancing rules,” the Department of Health and Social Care said in a statement to Mashable.
While these measures are temporary, they’re alarming and could lend themselves to misinterpretation. According to the Independent, the police can arrest and fine people a minimum of 100 pounds, however, they can’t come inside your home. So, if someone rats on you, you might be fined for having sex, but at least no one will come barging through your bedroom door.
Though NORML said marijuana legalization will not solve racial injustice in America, the organization believes it can be “an important part of this emerging discussion.”
The Fresh Toast – It has benefits from PTSD to pets. And the Feds should note marijuana legalization plays a role in fighting racial injustice.
The National Organization for the Reformation of Marijuana Laws (NORML) released a statement this week detailing how marijuana advocates can play a role in enacting racial justice in America. Following George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police, voices across the nation have protested against police brutality and policies that disproportionately target communities of color.
Racial inequalities have long existed in enforcing drug policies. According to analysis by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), African Americans are close to four times as likely to get arrested for marijuana possession compared to white Americans, despite the group consuming marijuana at similar rates. In some states, black people were up to six, eight, or almost ten times more likely to be arrested. From 2010 to 2018, racial disparities actually increased in marijuana enforcement.
“As protests continue to take place across our nation, more Americans are beginning to publicly demand action from their local, state, and federal leaders to end the policies and practices that promote, enable, and drive systemic racial injustice,” NORML executive director Erik Altieri said in a statement.
“In these conversations about policy solutions, many will include in their demands an ending to the war on drugs — or, at a minimum, an ending to marijuana criminalization. But while ending cannabis prohibition is both important and necessary, we must also recognize that doing so is but a single piece of a much larger puzzle.”
NORML detailed how marijuana prohibition is rooted in racial and xenophobic histories. Harry Anslinger Jr. was the Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and architect behind cannabis prohibition. He was known to label most marijuana users as “Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers,” and stated cannabis “causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others.”
“The primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races,” he also said.
NORML referenced the death of Philando Castile by Minnesota police officers as the lineage of this kind of rhetoric. When police pulled him over, Castile’s car smelled like “burnt marijuana” smoke. The officer who shot Castile said the aroma made him fear for his life.
“I thought, I was gonna die,” officer Jeronimo Yanez told investigators from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension 15 hours after he shot Castile. “And I thought if he’s, if he has the, the guts and the audacity to smoke marijuana in front of the five year old girl and risk her lungs and risk her life by giving her secondhand smoke and the front seat passenger doing the same thing then what, what care does he give about me. And, I let off the rounds and then after the rounds went off, the little girls was screaming.”
NORML also criticized the cannabis industry at large. In 2017, a Marijuana Business Daily poll found that less than 10% of cannabis businesses were founded by Hispanic or African American owners. Though states and cities have instituted cannabis equity programs, they have often led to mixed results.
Altieri stated the cannabis industry need to carry more responsibility of social justice moving forward.
“We must not ignore the reality that while a handful of venture capitalists are now engaging in licensed cannabis sales in systems that largely exclude minority ownership while millions of others — most of them young, poor, and people of color — continue to face arrest and incarceration for engaging in much of the same behavior,” Altieri said.
NORML stated specifically that marijuana legalization is not a cure-all for racial injustice in America. The organization also emphasized the need to continue discussion around these issue after the protests end.
“NORML believes that calls for cannabis legalization need to be an important part of this emerging discussion — but only a part,” Altieri said. “Black and brown lives matter and we owe it to our country and to ourselves to take tangible steps toward dismantling many of the power structures that perpetuate injustice. Marijuana prohibition is simply one of them.”
There are hints that cannabis delivery using mainstream widespread delivery services could happen someday in the same way that alcohol is delivered.
It’s hard to say where we are in the COVID-19 pandemic right now, as infections and deaths continue to rise. But there have been movements in the cannabis industry that are changing the way the industry operates amid the pandemic that may stay post-pandemic.
Being allowed to operate as an “essential” business — which had a few bumps in the road between including both medical with recreational as essential businesses in states such as Colorado (that state quickly changed and added rec) and Massachusetts — was one positive result that gave the industry some needed comeuppance and respect.
Sales have been strong, and delivery options were expanded as well.
Many states with legal medical and recreational cannabis have been allowing deliveries since they legalized. But because of COVID-19, dispensaries are now adjusting to curbside or drive-thru window sales to adapt to the new contactless, social distancing way of conducting business.
California licenses over 150 legal cannabis delivery companies, the most of any state, including Eaze (now scaling back operations), Puffy, CaliExpress and more. The scaling back of Eaze may be just a delivery service experiencing hard times during the pandemic, or it may represent a harbinger of things to come, leaving the door open for more of these adapted dispensary-centered curbside/drive-thru sales.
In some states, dispensaries are operating under temporary rule changes about how to purchase cannabis product that consumers hope will stay after the pandemic passes.
Those temporary rule changes include Oregon, where the state’s regulators underline that this will not become a permanent rule; that if any one bad player creates a problem the rule will be suspended for all dispensaries; that medical cannabis consumers or caregivers can buy up to 32 oz. of flower instead of the 24 oz. previously allowed by law; and further advises delivering product to a person in the parking lot of the store, a person at the front entrance of the store, or a person at a walk-up or drive-thru window of the store.
InWashington state, curbside delivery is also allowed in an area as close to the dispensary as possible. But the state does not allow a drive thru window.
What about Amazon, and Uber Eats, and other mainstream delivery services like FedEx, which was andis still the old school way of delivering cannabis?
Photo by Kai Pilger via Unsplash
Amazon has been caught up in somellegal deliveries, demonstrating people are already using the service illegally, and the companycurrently delivers hundreds of hemp products — hemp oil, hemp prerolls, hemp flower — along with almost anything else needed to operate a legal cannabis business (except the cannabis) which may be testing some state’s laws.
So it seems like it could be a quick transition for Amazon to deliver cannabis, if and when that happens.
The reality is that chances are still slim for those mainstream delivery services to deliver either medical or recreational cannabis as long as federal prohibition continues. A mainstream delivery company would be opening a can of worms and courting business disaster if it began delivering a substance still listed as a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration Schedule 1 worst-drug-on-the-plant.
Ah, we can dream, right? Well, all is not lost.
There are hints that cannabis delivery using mainstream widespread delivery services could still happen someday in the same way that alcohol is delivered.Drizly, an e-commerce alcohol delivery service, promises delivery of under one hour to customersin places like Arlington, Virginia and about half the other states in the country. Virginia has some of the country’s toughestliquor laws, but in Virginia, there are regulations and a precedence set about delivering intoxicating, heavily regulated substances.
Time will tell. This year has seen much turbulence, and much change on both a business and societal level. That Amazon box on your porch may someday have a special green Amazon logo, representing something different and revolutionary inside. Puff-puff-pass.
Despite looters stealing their cannabis products, numerous dispensary owners have announced they stand behind the protests.
Legal cannabis dispensaries across the country have been targeted by violent looters, who have used protests against police brutality to their advantage. Big-name West Coast retailers, like MedMen and Cookies, had storefronts smashed and merchandise stolen. Pure Oasis in Boston, the only black-run marijuana store in Massachusetts, lost more than $100,000 in stolen cannabis products.
Pure Oasis co-owner Kobie Evans described the robbery as a “targeted attack,” in comments to The Boston Globe, and said looters were using protests as cover. Ironically, Evans noted, Pure Oasis is a black-owned company — comedian Kevin Hart is also a co-owner — and employs people with prior drug convictions. The marijuana store was created as a solution model to address discriminatory police policies in drug enforcement, which disproportionately targeted communities of color.
Photo by Scott Olson/Staff/Getty Images
“Kevin [Hart] and I stand in solidarity with all the people protesting the injustice in Minneapolis and elsewhere,” Evans told the Globe. “In no way do we draw any connection between what happened to us and people protesting for a good cause. This is a somewhat isolated incident where a few people exploited the situation for personal gain, because someone wanted a free pair of Jordans and some weed to go with it.”
Protests have gathered in numerous American cities in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hand of Minneapolis police. But public officials like New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo have been careful to differentiate looters as a separate group from protesters. Social media users have documented which cannabis stores have been targeted by looters, with many burglaries occurring in major cities.
Despite the stolen goods, numerous dispensary owners have announced they stand behind the protests.
“It’s extremely unfortunate what happened to our store tonight on Melrose. But as a human living in the world we’re living in today, I can’t expect anything less until justice is served,” Berner said in a video posted to Instagram. “We can rebuild our store but you can’t bring someone back to life.”
“How can I worry about a store when there’s so much more going on in the world right now?” he added. “So much hate, so much anger, so much pain and a lack of justice. Please take care of your families and stay safe.”
