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In 1979, the New York Times wrote about TV actor Howard Hesseman and his Dr. Johnny Fever DJ character on WKRP in Cincinnati for 80 episodes from 1978-1982:

"Dr. Johnny Fever, as Mr. Hesseman makes clear in his portrayal of the disk Jockey, has ingested a fair share of drugs in his lifetime. He is one of the first characters on commercial television to openly espouse a style of life alien to much of middle America."

Hesseman, who passed away at 81 on Jan. 29, explained in the article:

“I think maybe Johnny smokes a little marijuana, drinks beer and wine and maybe a little hard liquor. And on one of those hard mornings at the station, he might take what for many years was referred to as a diet pill. But be is a moderate user of soft drugs, specifically marijuana."

"The network, needless to say, is terrified about that element,” he added.

Despite suggesting he is in favor of its decriminalization, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis cited the "putrid" scent of cannabis as a reason he may remain opposed to fully legalizing its use in the state, Politico reported. "I think a lot of those other areas that have done it you know have ended up regretting it," DeSantis said Wednesday during a press conference in Tallahassee, according to Politico. "I could not believe the pungent odor that you would see in some of these places and I don't want to see that here. I want people to be able to breathe freely."

Democrat Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, who has publicly acknowledged her use of medical marijuana, is running to unseat DeSantis in 2022 and has incorporated marijuana legalization into her platform. Florida voters passed a constitutional amendment in 2016 that legalized the drug's medicinal use.

"You can still go to jail for weed in Florida because Ron DeSantis doesn't like the way it smells!?!" Fried said in a tweet on Wednesday.

"Sounds like Dictator Karen wasn't having much fun at Yale and Harvard so he's taking it out on the rest of us."

As DeSantis gears up for the gubernatorial race, Democrats have filed at least 10 marijuana-related bills for the 2022 legislative session, Florida Politics reported.

Women who smoke cannabis during pregnancy double the risk of stunting their baby’s growth, a study warns.

Risks of premature birth, lower birth weight and possible low intelligence in later life were all increased. The report came from data on 60,000 mothers in the US, Canada and Jamaica in 16 studies. Chances of newborns being small for their age rose by 61 per cent for cannabis users. And the risk of being born premature went up by 28 per cent. Scores given to newborns that assess pulse, breathing and reactions also fell by 26 per cent, the Marchand Institute for Minimally Invasive Surgery, US, found. Dr Greg Marchand said: “Women exposed to marijuana in pregnancy were at a significantly increased risk of adverse neonatal outcomes.

“Given increasing marijuana legalisation and use worldwide, raising awareness and educating patients about these adverse outcomes may help to improve neonatal health.”

Nebraskans for medical marijuana were out over the weekend trying to get signatures on two petitions that could put the issue on the November ballot.

It's the latest attempt after the Nebraska Supreme Court barred a measure to legalize medical marijuana back in 2020.

As they kick things into high gear, volunteers and campaign managers say they’re feeling confident.

Crista Eggers is one of the people fighting hard to get medical marijuana on the ballot.

Her 7-year-old son Colton is one of the reasons why.

Lucky for High Times, there are numerous disclaimers within the offering that there is no guarantee that the stock will ever trade.

With snow on the ground and a whisper of spring in the air, it means it is time for High Times to make their annual announcement of going public.

The removal of the SAFE Act from the defense bill is not the end of the road, but rather another indication of the steep climb to federal cannabis legalization.

The majority of cannabis advocates and supporters in the United States were let down by the Senate’s decision to pull out the SAFE ACT from the defense bill last month. Now that the shock of the removal has abated, these groups are rallying together to look for the next way forward. Lawmakers have started work on presenting a singular bill that encompasses the benefits the SAFE ACT could bring to the country.

The removal may happened for a reason, because in the weeks after this disappointment, new and better opportunities have been presenting themselves.

A Step Backward

From the first day, the SAFE Act bill was introduced to the legislature some years ago, passing the bill has always turned out to be a roller coaster journey. The result over the years has been a return to the starting point. Advocates and lawmakers held out hope that last year could be the year of federal cannabis reforms, only for the senate to pull the measure out at the last minute.

Many believe that this bill closes the gap between multistage operators and some small-scale cannabis entrepreneurs who have been unable to obtain private equity. They also think that small cannabis businesses would be allowed to make more profits if the playground were leveled with the SAFE ACT bill. However, the majority of the Senate lawmakers have refused to see the light or accept the benefits vividly written in the bill, claiming the language shows a different outcome.

The reason the Senate cited for striking out the measure from the defense bill is that the measure does little to stamp down on crimes but leans in favor of the MSOs. For a bill that the House had previously passed, the Senate’s reason seems a bit weird. Anyway, it’s the new year. With a new year comes new opportunities and new congressional sessions. Advocates are linking up and working together to have a fresh go at it in Congress. The objective for 2022 is to create a more equitable bill that not only leans towards MSOs but also enhances the safety of communities around the country.

A chain of video rental stores will now be used as cannabis dispensaries in Ohio, increasing the number of dispensaries in a state that sorely needs them.

Remember the abandoned video store near the home where you grew up in? It may now be a cannabis dispensary. At least, if you live in Ohio.

The Columbus Dispatch reports that over a dozen video rental properties belonging to Family Video are candidates for housing dispensaries and cannabis businesses. These locations will be selected through a lottery starting this Thursday, with over 1,500 applications submitted for 73 new medical cannabis licenses.

The 12 Family Video locations in question received 192 applications from various contenders. While Family Video’s parent company announced that would be shutting down operations last year, Keith Hoogland, their CEO, said that the real estate branch was still in operation. It has been contacted by a variety of cannabis businesses looking to pursue rentals.

“I think after a certain period of time, they realized they could capitalize on the situation,” said Adam Thomarios, CEO of Klutch Cannabis.

Ohio legalized medical marijuana in 2016, with dispensaries finally opening their doors in 2019. The process has been a slow and rocky one, with patients complaining over long wait times and expensive products. The addition of the 73 licenses would increase the state’s dispensaries to 130, with authorities hoping to grow the business, provide better demands to patients, and make it run smoother.

At only two years old in 2016, Jaxsyn Carwile was diagnosed with autism, and the months and years after his diagnosis his symptoms escalated.

“It was like a snowball effect after his diagnosis,” said Jaxsyn’s mother, Tiffany Carwile. “Insomnia, self-injurious behavior, he had silent seizures for a while.”

But Tiffany said the pills that his doctor prescribed him made it worse.

“My son at one point was ingesting about 300 pills a month and he was only five years old,” said Tiffany.

“Every pill caused side effects that deemed more pills.”

The driver of an armored car carrying $712,000 in cash from licensed marijuana dispensaries was heading into Barstow on a Mojave Desert freeway in November when San Bernardino County Sheriff’s deputies pulled him over. They interrogated him, seized the money and turned it over to the FBI.

A few weeks later, deputies stopped the same driver in Rancho Cucamonga, took an additional $350,000 belonging to legal pot stores and gave that cash to the FBI too.

Now, the FBI is trying to confiscate the nearly $1.1-million bounty, which it might share with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department. The FBI says the money is tied to federal drug or money-laundering crimes, but has specified no unlawful conduct and charged no one with a crime.

The cash seizures — and another from the same trucking company in Kansas — raise questions about whether the Justice Department under President Biden is moving to disrupt the operations of licensed marijuana businesses in California and other states where pot is legal.

The FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles have been forced to return tens of millions of dollars in cash and valuables seized by federal agents last March from hundreds of safe deposit boxes in Beverly Hills after the government failed to produce evidence to back up its allegations the money and goods were criminal proceeds. Some of that money belonged to owners of state-licensed marijuana businesses.

Some people with Parkinson’s disease find that using cannabis products helps to ease certain symptoms, according to results from a survey.

The findings notably suggest that cannabis products with high levels of the chemical THC are more likely to induce both positive and negative effects in Parkinson’s patients.

“These survey results offer a broad overview of real-world cannabis use patterns and experience among a large group of people living with [Parkinson’s] and provide initial results regarding the differential symptomatic effects of” different cannabis products, researchers wrote.

Findings were published in the study, “Higher risk, higher reward? Self-reported effects of real-world cannabis use in Parkinson’s disease,” in Movement Disorders.

Cannabis has two main active components: tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), which is the main chemical that induces a “high,” and cannabidiol (CBD), which doesn’t induce a “high” but may have numbing or anti-inflammatory properties.

 After a record number of calls to the Illinois Poison Center (IPC) in 2021 related to cannabis, legislation has been filed at the Statehouse to limit the potency of some products sold at cannabis dispensaries.

For the bill sponsor, Rep. Mark Batinick, R-Plainfield, he says the bill isn't likely to pass as written, but he wanted to file it before the Jan. 28 deadline on behalf of the Illinois State Medical Society (ISMS), a non-profit association of healthcare professionals.

Batinick says the request from the ISMS is in response to a recent rise in cannabis-related calls to the IPC since 2019, when 487 cases were reported. In 2020, there were 743 cases and in 2021 there were 855 cases.

In 2019, there were 81 cannabis-related IPC cases that involved children ages five and younger. In 2020, there were 202 cases. By 2021, the number increased to 278 cases, representing a 243% increase from 2019.

The IPC credits the majority of this rise to edibles, or consumable marijuana, and says 40% of their cases involving children and gummy edibles involve hospitalization.

As various forms of Cannabis have been made available around the country, Fremont County Prevention and WASCOP encourage families, schools and communities to have honest and educated conversations about the risks associated with using Cannabis.

For the purpose of this discussion, Cannabis can be broken down into four categories. This includes FDA-approved prescriptions, Hemp products, CBD products and Marijuana products.

In Wyoming,

“When it comes to Cannabis, there’s a lot to talk about,” Tauna Groomsmith, Fremont County Prevention Director said.

“It is important to understand and know the various forms that Cannabis products come in, the potential benefit vs risk as well as any potential legal issues. That’s what we want families to talk about.”

The Joint Committee on Cannabis Policy is polling its members on legislation that appears to address the persistent issues with host community agreements and social equity in the new cannabis industry, and that would pave the way for social consumption sites in Massachusetts.

Members of the committee have until 5 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 28, to weigh in on redrafted legislation that would put tighter restrictions on the legally required contracts between marijuana businesses and their host communities, establish a Cannabis Social Equity Trust Fund, and lay the groundwork for cities and towns to allow on-site cannabis consumption establishments within their borders. The poll opened late in the afternoon on Wednesday, Jan. 26.

The legislation, which a spokesperson said is a priority for House Speaker Ron Mariano, appears to address some of the issues that the Cannabis Control Commission has most vocally been asking lawmakers to act on.

Committee co-chairs Rep. Daniel Donahue and Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz recommended favorable reports for two bills redrafted in committee to incorporate parts of about a dozen other related proposals. The new bill, titled "An Act relative to social equity and host community agreements in the cannabis industry," will be referred to the House as H 174 and to the Senate as S 72. Some of its provisions mirror those of a bill that the House passed in early 2020 but never surfaced in the Senate.

The bill would create a $10 million Cannabis Social Equity Trust Fund "for the purpose of making grants and loans, including no-interest loans and forgivable loans, to social equity program participants and economic empowerment priority applicants to encourage the full participation of entrepreneurs from communities that have been disproportionately harmed by marijuana prohibition and enforcement." In addition to the initial $10 million in funding, the bill creates other ways for the fund to grow.

Frankly, with all things considered, it may be fair to assume that tech is one of the most cannabis-friendly industries to work in.

There aren’t many industries that have been more welcoming to the cannabis community than tech. And the industry’s adoption of cannabis couldn’t have come at a better time.  

Because cutting edge technology has been crucial in connecting cannabis brands and products with their consumers while meeting expectations of regulators, it’s only natural to wonder how accepting employees in the tech industry are about the substance itself. Some of the signs that indicate an increasing level of acceptance of cannabis may surprise you. 

I just read about the research study from Oregon State University, which found that consuming two cannabinoids (called cannabigerolic acid, or CBG-A, and cannabidiolic acid, or CBD-A) could prevent the spread of COVID-19. Awesome! But the study falls short.

CBG-A and CBD-A are both derived from hemp (i.e., part of the cannabis sativa species, but without the psychoactive component, tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC). Both CBG and CBD have an abundance of cannabidiolic acid, which has the potential to bind onto COVID-19 spike proteins and prevent further infection. THC-A also has this acid (and in abundance!). However, researchers cannot study THC because it is still federally classified as a Schedule 1 drug and it would violate OSU's policy.

This is a huge shortcoming, and it serves as another reminder that we are overdue for legalizing marijuana federally. Currently, 36 states have legalized medical marijuana. The CDC estimates 48.2 million people in the U.S. (of a 329.5 million population) consume marijuana. That means approximately 82 percent of the population is missing out on cannabis's health benefits, such as the potential to prevent COVID-19. If more clinical studies were allowed to study THC, there would be more information about cannabis's effect on our health. And with more information it's likely that nonrecreational consumers will be more willing to try cannabis for its specific health benefits.

I say this because I was a nonrecreational consumer who only turned to cannabis out of sheer desperation. I was diagnosed with Crohn's Disease in 2014 after 11 years of repeated misdiagnosis and consistently debilitating health. I tried myriad Western medicines, but cannabis was the only remedy that brought me back to a state of normalcy and stabilized my quality of life. The benefits were so significant that I started cultivating my own cannabis so that I could ensure a sufficient supply of high quality (organic) cannabis.

There are many similar stories to mine, and probably many more with 82 percent of the population not realizing the health potential. If cannabis remains federally illegal, we are inhibiting research and delaying major discoveries on its health benefits.

For decades, myths and tales have surrounded cannabis like no other plant

Opponents demonise it, supporters praise it as a universal remedy: for decades, myths and tales have surrounded cannabis like no other plant. Here is how cannabis is viewed around the globe.

Mythical plant

This is the hemp plant of legend. Intoxicating cannabis can be obtained from certain varieties, so its cultivation is strictly regulated in Germany. Unlike 200 years ago, hemp plants in the country are completely out of the public eye, paving the way for myths generated from the camps of supporters and opponents alike.

French troops brought home hashish

The use of hemp as an intoxicant has a comparatively recent history in Europe. French soldiers, who took home hashish made from the resin of female cannabis plants from Napoleon's Egyptian campaign in 1798, played a key role in spreading it. While Napoleon banned hashish in Egypt, it became popular in Paris.

Prescribed for menstrual cramps

Since the 1990s, the UK has been discussing the legalisation of cannabis. There was a rumour at the time that Queen Victoria was prescribed cannabis for menstrual cramps. The only evidence: in 1890, her personal physician John Russel Reynolds noted in a medical journal the "great value" of cannabis in treating an array of conditions.

Parchment or hemp?

Urban legend has it that the American Declaration of Independence was written on paper made from hemp. That's not quite true: the document, vacuum-sealed and behind thick panes of glass at the National Archives in Washington, DC, was written on parchment paper. The first two drafts, on the other hand, were probably written on hemp paper.

Hemp oils are often used as a dietary supplement, but many people do not realize that they can also be used externally as a skin and body care product. There are actually many ways that hemp seed oil can be used to care for and improve skin, hair, and nails.

Here are some of the best ways to use hemp oil in body care and make the most out of every drop of oil.

#1 Tackling Acne

People are increasingly turning to hemp oil as a way of treating and reducing the signs of acne. This might sound counterintuitive as acne is caused by a buildup of oil on the skin, but it may be useful for people with extremely dry skin. 

Gently rubbing a small amount of hemp oil on to clean skin at least once a day may help protect the skin’s lipid layer and hydrate.

Additionally, hemp oils may be helpful for cleansing and removing makeup. They have the advantage of providing the skin with additional vitamins and minerals. Hemp oil works by dissolving the oils and waxes in makeup and can be particularly useful when dealing with stubborn waterproof eye makeup.

Years into Colorado’s recreational cannabis boom, Colorado Springs still doesn’t have legal, recreational cannabis sales.

A group of business and community leaders in Colorado Springs, Colorado has launched a bid to legalize sales of recreational cannabis in the city, arguing that tax revenue generated by purchases of legal cannabis by local residents should stay in the community.

Colorado voters legalized sales of recreational cannabis with the passage of Amendment 64 in 2012, and regulated sales began in the state two years later. But Colorado Springs banned recreational cannabis sales in 2013, although the city is home to more than 100 medical cannabis dispensaries. 

Colorado Springs Ballot Measure Filed

On Monday, the group Your Choice Colorado Springs filed ballot language for a proposed voter initiative that would allow the city’s existing medical marijuana dispensaries to apply for licenses to sell adult-use cannabis. In a statement from the group, the coalition of community and business leaders said that Colorado Springs residents are forced to travel to nearby cities that allow recreational sales. As a result, the city is leaving millions of dollars in potential sales tax revenue on the table, according to Your Choice Colorado Springs.

“It’s hard to believe just how much tax revenue politicians have robbed our city of over the past decade,” said Cliff Black, an attorney and the lead elector petitioning the city for adult-use cannabis sales.

“Recreational marijuana is 100 percent legal for every single adult living in the city. Yet the city gets none of the benefits. Instead, residents drive and spend their hard-earned money in Manitou, Pueblo, and even Denver, and then bring their marijuana right back home to Colorado Springs. With this initiative, we are asking voters if they want to keep their tax dollars local.”