WeedLife News Network

After receiving a suspended sentence for possession of cannabis last year, Filip Dostovski walked out of the Skopje courthouse and lit a joint outside as cameras rolled.

It was an act of "revolt against their sentence and against their policy", said the 41-year-old cancer survivor, who is pushing for the free use of marijuana in North Macedonia.

The Balkan state is eyeing a chance to become a cannabis pioneer in Europe, as the government considers legalising marijuana in what would be a first on the continent.

But many worry about a lack of follow-through, a problem that has dogged the government's drug policy for the last five years.

Home to little over two million people, North Macedonia legalised the cultivation and sale of marijuana-derived medical products in 2016, hoping to get the edge in a fast-growing European market.

More than a year into the legal recreational marijuana industry in Illinois, a glaring omission remains among minority-owned businesses.

When Governor Pritzker and Springfield legislators pushed for recreational use of cannabis, they said they were doing so with an eye towards equity.  Dispensaries opened statewide on Jan. 1, 2020. Yet, 15 months later, no minority-owned cannabis businesses operate in the state.

Illinois’ cannabis business accounted for $1 billion in sales in its first year of legality. However, social equity remains a work in progress.

It is time that we stop treating cannabis like a street drug and start treating it like any other medicine or commodity in society.

Colorado has long been a shining beacon on how to legalize cannabis. Since they have officially gone green in 2012, they have been pioneering cannabis legislation and showing the world that if you legalize drugs — the apocalypse won’t come.

With some of the most inclusive and relaxed cannabis laws on the books, it’s no surprise that a new bill in Colorado would require schools to store cannabis-based medicines for students. Currently students may consume cannabis for medical purposes on school grounds as long as a legal Guardian provides them with the doses.

However, for working parents this is definitely a difficult thing to achieve. Especially when we’re talking about kids that require multiple doses during the day in order to manage their symptoms. For example, a child suffering from a seizure disorder requires multiple doses throughout the day in order to pacify any potential episodes.

This would completely inhibit any Guardian the ability to sustain any type of occupation other than that as the caregiver of the patient. In the instance of a parent that is working, it would be simply detrimental to the overall health and Wellness of the child. Especially if it’s inhibits the caretaker to earn a living.

The study of workers ages 40 to 62 found that cannabis had no adverse impact on productivity and offers workers a new, effective form of pain management therapy.

The slow unraveling of the many myths told about cannabis during decades of the War on Drugs continues. In the latest case, a new study has found that states where recreational marijuana is legal have seen a drop in the number of workers compensation cases.

The famed athlete is sponsored by Mendi, her sister's CBD company.

It is true that many, many professional athletes are involved in social causes and charities. But few, like Colin Kaepernick, engage to a level that puts their own comfort and career at risk.

One such person is Megan Rapinoe: Olympic gold medalist, two-time Women's World Cup champion, and 2019 FIFA Women's World Player of the Year.

Beyond her massive professional success, Megan is a feminist icon and an idol to many. In recent times, she’s become one of the faces of the equal pay movement, speaking up profusely on the issue in relation to the U.S. women’s soccer team during the last World Cup, capturing the attention of millions.

Fed-Ex and UPS are following suit after the PACT Act was passed by Congress.

Late in December 2020, Congress gave the go-signal to an appropriations bill called the Preventing Online Sales of E-Cigarettes to Children Act (PACT), which prohibits the US Postal Service (UPS) from shipping both tobacco and cannabis vapor products.

Unfortunately, marijuana use can still disqualify you from getting hired, even in states with fully legal weed.

The embrace of marijuana reform and using CBD in wellness spaces could cause someone to think the stigma surrounding cannabis has disappeared. While that may be true from a cultural perspective—more than two out of every three Americans support cannabis legalization—you may want to reconsider if you’re looking for a job.

According to data from Simply Hired, more than 40% of hiring managers at mid-size companies and more than 51% at large companies say they still test for marijuana in the job application process. The anonymous survey, which included hiring managers at more than 700 companies, gives valuable insight into how companies truly view employees using cannabis. The majority of hiring managers said a job applicant would be immediately disqualify after testing positive for marijuana.

Legality of marijuana in the state also has little impact in determining cannabis policies at companies. Even in fully legal states, the majority of business maintain a marijuana policy for employees. According to the survey, this appears as an act of companies covering their own tail. While 75.4% of hiring managers say an employee would be fired for smoking weed at work, 68.4% also felt employee marijuana use was fine so long as companies didn’t know about it. Think of it as a don’t ask, don’t smoke on company property policy of sorts.

Photo by Matthew Henry via Burst

When this year started, I’d discussed when the United States was set to pursue the legalization of recreational cannabis. Cannabis use has ramped up in North American during the COVID-19 pandemic. Entrepreneurs and investors are scrambling to get in on the largest cannabis market on the planet. Today, I want to look at the best cannabis stocks to snatch up as U.S. legalization talks heat up.

Thailand. Some parts of the cannabis plant and the hemp plant are now exempted from the list of category V narcotics ("exempted cannabis" and "exempted hemp"). On 25 February 2021, the Thai Ministry of Public Health (MOPH) issued one of the highly anticipated notifications which amended the designation of foods which are prohibited from being produced, imported or sold (the "Prohibited Food Notification"). The Prohibited Food Notification no longer prohibits the use of exempted cannabis and exempted hemp in food products.

The Prohibited Food Notification repealed the previous MOPH notification that prohibited every part of the cannabis plant and the hemp plant from being used as food ingredients and amended the list of prohibited plants or parts of plants to remove exempted cannabis and exempted hemp from the list. Business operators will be able to use exempted cannabis and/or exempted hemp as an ingredient in food products in accordance with the applicable MOPH regulations to be issued in respect of the related food quality and standards.

Accordingly, another implementing regulation prescribing food products, food quality and standard of hemp seed, hemp seed oil, hemp seed protein and food supplement which contains hemp seed, hemp seed oil, and hemp seed protein as an ingredient (the "Hemp Seed Notification") was also issued on 4 March 2021 and became effective on the following day.

We expect additional implementing regulations with respect to hemp based food products to be issued soon.

We are closely monitoring this development and will keep you informed.

More than 1 in 10 opponents of legalization say they are likely to be a customer.

NEW YORK, March 17, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- While 61% of New York State residents support the legalization of adult-use recreational marijuana sales, more than half (52%) of those living in New York City would oppose its sale in their neighborhood. This disparity between general support and willingness to actually live near one is a significant problem when communities decide where, if anywhere, they want to allow marijuana retail sales. 

With 61% of New York state residents believing a community should have the right to "opt-out" and ban marijuana sales in their community all together, the battle to site facilities is likely to require extensive community outreach and education efforts.

"Legalization is only the beginning of the battle," said Patrick Fox, CEO of Consensus Strategies, a research and strategy firm with extensive experience in the siting of cannabis facilities, "The fight to find viable sites will be intense. We often hear from cannabis entrepreneurs who think that the level of support for legalization will translate into support for siting a retail or cultivation facility. It often does not."

Local zoning and planning authorities will have the ability to decide where retail and cultivation facilities will be able to locate within their communities. They can choose to allow them in higher visibility general retail zones treating them like a liquor store. They can relegate them to more obscure, lower profile areas like an industrial park and restrict signage and visibility or they can ban the use in their community completely. The majority of New Yorkers (53%) believe that marijuana retail should keep a low profile and locate outside of high visibility retail areas.

 Little Green Pharma has agreed to acquire two properties underlying its South West WA cultivation and manufacturing facilities as well as two adjacent properties.

IT'S been a big week for South West-based Little Green Pharma, with the medical cannabis company signing a binding agreement to acquire land for expansion and delivering its first shipment of medicinal cannabis oils into a French national medicinal cannabis trial.

LGP has agreed to acquire two properties underlying its South West cultivation and manufacturing facilities, as well as two adjacent properties, with a total land area of about 16,000 square metres.

The purchase is intended to help service higher-than-expected international market demand for LGP cannabis flower medicines, as well as the continued strong growth in demand for LGP's cannabis medicines in domestic markets.

Managing director Fleta Solomon said LGP had the ability to double its indoor cultivation capacity with 3000m2 available within its existing high-security fencing line.

State legislators seem to be highly motivated to push marijuana legalization through.

Lawmakers in New York are apparently close to a deal to make the state the latest to legalize recreational marijuana.

Leaders in Albany said Monday that a final version of the bill is imminent, and that it could be brought to a video perhaps as soon as next week.

Speaking at an event that day, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo told reporters that he spent the previous weekend on the phone with Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes.

“We’re very close on marijuana,” Cuomo said.

The Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development has granted millions of dollars to fund cannabis equity grant programs.

Throughout the past year, there has been much talk about how to make things more equitable for people of color and marginalized communities, and a big part of that is providing equity programs and expungements to the cannabis industry, in order to right the wrongs perpetrated by the war on drugs. Now, Los Angeles, Long Beach, and some other California cities are making history with their Cannabis Equity Grant Programs. 

t is throwdown time, generally in Spain, over the entire cannabis conversation. 

Currently, cannabis clubs in Basque country are challenging authorities over their right to operate during the Pandemic. Meanwhile Barcelona clubs are leading their own similar challenge. These two regions are the Spanish states which have the most cannabis clubs. To add to all of the legal complexity, these are two of the most “independent” of the Spanish states, with a long history of confrontation against federal authorities.

No matter where they are, clubs (and their clients) across Spain have suffered, unsurprisingly, during the Pandemic. During the early days of the first global shutdown everywhere, most were closed, no discussion. However, some began reopening, even if on a limited, pick up basis, challenging local authorities, much as happened in U.S. states. Unlike the U.S. however, there was never really a formal discussion about how “mandatory” such services were. That said, no matter how reluctant politicians were to touch the issue, police in several countries, not just Spain, have weighed in on the fact that with clubs and/or coffee shops closed, the much more dangerous illicit market flourishes. And violence, particularly in poorer areas, has flared.

That is monumental enough. 

Here is why. The entire Spanish “social club” scene has developed, much like the situation in Holland, if not the early U.S. states—i.e., the entire state legit, federal illegal model that the Biden White House apparently also insists on perpetuating. In other words, in the grey areas of federal law. Unlike Holland and the U.S., however, the Spanish club model is a non-profit endeavor.

A vital piece of information to know before using any of this ancient medicine is that the cannabis plant has both male and female parts, and both of them have very different chemical components. While it is basically the same thing, it may have various effects on animals.

So, you need to be cautious before deciding to buy the best product. It has been proven that male and female parts of the cannabis plant can differentiate. But an important thing to know is that this percentage is not safe for cats and can cause a lot of adverse side effects.

For example, the female part of the marijuana plant can contain from five to twenty percent of THC. And some more exclusive grades can contain up from twenty-five to thirty percent THC. But in order to create a batch of cannabinoids in some countries, the THC level has to be a maximum of 0.3 percent. That is the dose that has been tested in humans, and it has been proven that they will not get the high effect.

If you want to look more into the regularities of THC level in this product, click on the following link for more info https://www.fda.gov/news-events/public-health-focus/fda-regulation-cannabis-and-cannabis-derived-products-including-cannabidiol-cbd.

The pros for using CBD on cats

Here is the first thing you need to know about Franjo, as he is more apt to be known to both patients and others: he is a board-certified German medical artz (physician). 

Here is the second: he is also a doctor with a disability.

As a result of this, he has a unique perspective on the topic of cannabis as medicine that few in either the scientific or medical professions can match in both his medical training and his sympathy for patients.

Because this is not a new avocation, Grotenhermen is one of the leading cannabis doctors in the country right now. Further his voice as a medical doctor is one of the most credible ones on the edge of the giant green reform that is slowly starting to take hold in Deutschland as cannabis as medicine becomes a more accepted reality.

No matter how well you know him, however, is impossible to miss that he is passionate, articulate, and takes no prisoners.

A hemp farm in Australia is reportedly on the nose, with its odour causing problems for some local residents.

The ABC reports some residents living close to a trial hemp crop in  Red Cliffs, Victoria are reporting headaches resulting from the smell – but others say the smell doesn’t concern them.

iHemp Victoria is the officially recognised trade association for industrial hemp in state. The organisation’s president Darren Christie said he had never heard of these sorts of complaints and trial crops have been grown around Victoria for the last 15 years.

For the cultivator looking to achieve the highest efficiency, most consistent yields, and most predictable revenue results, this year has been a real challenge to say the least.

“It’s a new landscape with COVID-19,” says Derek Oxford, CEO and Founder of Total Grow Control, an engineering and manufacturing company that builds reliable nutrient delivery systems and water filtration solutions. Like many companies serving the cannabis industry, Total Grow Control thrives on in-person relationships and traditional sales processes. Hence, social distancing dealt a heavy blow.

Yet, Total Grow Control (TGC) adapted. They changed how they managed vendors and how they set up the manufacturing facility. What’s more, all TGC’s latest systems have built-in cameras.

Almost 25% of patients with Parkinson’s disease reported that they had used cannabis in the prior six months in a survey from the Parkinson’s Foundation. A report on the survey, “Weeding through the haze: A survey on cannabis use among people living with Parkinson’s disease in the US,” was published last week in the journal NPJ Parkinson’s Disease.

In the report, the authors note that Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder, affecting more than 1 million Americans at a cost to society of more than $50 billion dollars. The disease causes a variety of motor symptoms such as tremors, rigidity, and an unstable posture. Less well-known symptoms include sleep disorders, cognitive changes, pain, anxiety, depression, and hallucinations.

Parkinson’s disease patients typically use pharmaceutical medications to treat their condition with varying degrees of success. However, common treatments do not address the non-motor symptoms and can sometimes cause side effects including dyskinesia, an abnormality or impairment of voluntary movement. 

As a result, many patients turn to complementary or alternative treatments for their disease. 

“The medicinal use of cannabis represents a novel, alternative approach toward PD symptom control,” the authors note. “Preclinical evidence suggests that cannabinoids could be widely beneficial to neurodegenerative diseases, including PD.”