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Left-leaning policy wonks call it the biggest political layup of our time. It enjoys rare bipartisan support in a time of rancorous political division. It would lower rates of incarceration among people of color and chip away at the prison industrial complex.

So why has cannabis not yet been legalized, or at least decriminalized, on the federal level?

Congress is poised to tackle the issue in December when it votes on the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act of 2019, aka the MORE Act. If passed, the decriminalization bill would impose sweeping changes to the ways weed functions in society, and offer a sign of retreat in the U.S. government’s decades-long war on drugs.

The Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act of 2019 is a bill sponsored by former Senator and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris that would decriminalize weed by removing it from the government’s list of controlled substances

In an effort to better share institutional knowledge and regulatory practices, Louisiana is one of 19 states that is now part of the newly formed non-partisan organization called the Cannabis Regulators Association (CANNRA).

The Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry (LDAF) which regulates medical marijuana in Louisiana will be represented by Medical Marijuana Program Director Tabitha Irvin, Esq. CANNRA is being established to assist federal, state, and local jurisdictions that have approved or are considering the legalization of medical and/or recreational cannabis, according to a spokesperson for LDAF.

“CANNRA is restricted to cannabis regulators to develop best practices and policies and also to support consistent regulatory actions,” said Agriculture and Forestry Commissioner Mike Strain, D.V.M.

Irvin added, “It is an honor to be a founding member of an organization that will develop standards in the industry and provides regulatory guidance to state and federal elected officials. We are also proud to collaborate and welcome the expertise of other states as we regulate products so they are safe for consumers."

For years, cannabis regulators across the country have relied on each other to share regulatory experiences, institutional expertise, and to provide assistance navigating the numerous evolving policy and regulatory issues associated with legalizing and regulating cannabis. Often the first step for state and local jurisdictions weighing legalization is to engage with regulators from established markets and programs. However, there has never been an organization to facilitate these interactions or help stakeholders find objective data and evidence-based approaches to policymaking and implementation.

In over 16 years in the NBA, Al Harrington played in more than 1,000 total games, made an appearance in 55 playoff matches, and scored over 13,000 points.

However, just by speaking to him, you’d be convinced that he wants to be known more for his success as a cannabis entrepreneur than his time on the court.

In 2011, while the former first round pick was still playing for the Denver Nuggets, Harrington launched Viola Brands, a cannabis company with a focus on social equity, named after his grandmother.

The move showed tremendous foresight by the former player, especially considering the widespread cannabis boom the city would see just a few years later.

Most of what’s gone on in the field of medicinal cannabis has been related to simply isolating and/or replicating a specific cannabinoid to get its benefits. In today’s world of cannabis medicine, the new thing is for a customer to order a premium blend of their favorite compounds, because today, you can actually customize your cannabinoids.

Isolating cannabinoids

There’s plenty in the worlds of medicinal cannabis and recreational marijuana that have nothing to do with isolating anything. If a person wants to smoke hemp flowers, or buy a few grams of high-THC weed, they’re getting the whole plant, no isolation needed. However, the fields of medical and recreational cannabis have been more and more reliant on the idea of isolated cannabinoids. CBD is the most popular right now, with CBD oil and vape cartridges flying off store shelves all over the world.

Much like with other forms of pharmaceutical medicine, where we often pop a pill without really thinking what that circular, chalky, perfectly-shaped tablet contains, where it came from, and how it got to be in the form we take it in, we don’t often question how our CBD oil came to be.

Cannabinoids don’t start out as cannabinoids, but rather as acids that must be heated – or decarboxylated – in order to form into the cannabinoids we are familiar with like THC, CBD, and even the rarer CGBV, and THCV. Solvents are then used to separate certain parts. These can include, ethanol, hydrocarbon (butane, propane…), chloroform, light petroleum, and CO2 – which doesn’t leave a residue.

After extraction with one of these solvents, the solution is filtered at least a couple times, generally through something like charcoal. Then it should be made more concentrated, down to about half the volume, using a 2% aqueous sodium sulfate solution. When the solvent is stripped out, and the solution is concentrated, its left as a crude oil. At this point it can even be purified further with redistillation or column chromatography.

Even without Congressional assistance, the president has the authority to initiate the process of getting marijuana rescheduled by the Controlled Substances Act. 

While it is still kind of hard to see through the funk of the 2020 election, rest assured it is over for Donald Trump. As of January 2021, President-elect Joe Biden will take his shot at making America great again.

It will be during his first 100 days, a period that typically sets the tone for the presidency, that America will get to see precisely what kind of leader it is dealing with. Some citizens hope to see action that will help rebuild an economy crushed by the dreaded COVID-19, others want an effective vaccine, and a good deal of the population just wants medical marijuana.

Although more than half the nation has laws on the books that allow people to use marijuana for medicinal use, the federal government isn’t as progressive. Cannabis remains a Schedule I dangerous drug within the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), which basically means that it is highly addictive and doesn’t possess any healing properties. But science disagrees. There is a growing body of evidence showing that marijuana can help patients treat a variety of health conditions ranging from insomnia to more life threatening illnesses. And as for all of that business about being “highly addictive,” even Uncle Sam admits that it is only about as habit forming as caffeine. 

Still, it would take an act of Congress to reschedule cannabis. Well, that or a highly motivated president. 

More Utah doctors will be able to recommend medical cannabis to qualifying patients, under a new bill being proposed.

The forthcoming legislation will allow physicians to recommend cannabis for up to 15 patients without having to go through hours of specialized training through the state. But if a doctor does, they can help up to 275 patients.

"We want to make the barrier to entry on the part of providers, prescribers, lower," said Rep. Ray Ward, R-Bountiful, who is co-sponsoring the bill with Senate Majority Leader Evan Vickers.

As FOX 13 reported in an investigation last year, qualifying patients still struggle across Utah to find doctors willing to recommend medical cannabis. Some don't want to go through so much paperwork and licensing for a handful of patients, while others are uneasy about recommending cannabis.

"This bottleneck that we have here, it is forcing patients to go outside and try to doctor shop which was never the intention," said Desiree Hennessy, the head of the Utah Patients Coalition, which sponsored Proposition 2 that legalized medical marijuana in Utah.

But, distributors could be faced with an even bigger issue.

There's no definite timeline for when medical dispensaries will be able to make the transition, but when they do, they may not be able to meet the high demand for cannabis.

Spencer Andrews is a public affair director for March and Ash, a dispensary in Imperial County. He addresses an important matter that happened when California made the switch.

"What we saw in California was a shortage in the supply chain. I mean, you're just working with many aspects of the supply chain: manufacturing, cultivation, testing, distribution," Andrews explained. "All of these ancillary services have to get up and running and be able to meet the demand."

All of these steps take time.

Sometime before Christmas, Richard DeLisi, 71, will finally be released from the Florida prison where he has lived since 1988.

DeLisi is serving a 90-year prison term for selling marijuana. He tried to sell quite a bit of it—1,500 pounds, as a Miami New Times profile recounts—but he was never charged with a violent crime. Nor was he alleged to have hurt anyone.

Marijuana legalization is very popular these days, and DeLisi has already served more than twice the average sentence for murder. So it seems reasonable and good that he’d be let out, to enjoy what time he has left in relative freedom.

For this, he has COVID-19 to thank—and not marijuana legalization.

Legalization is proving extremely effective at creating a new class of entrepreneurs and creating wealth for investors, but not very good at fulfilling some of its most basic promises.

Now that 15 states have legalized the use of recreational cannabis — and only six states still count it as fully illegal — industry experts say the federal government is facing more pressure to ease its tough standards on the use and sale of the drug.

President-elect Joe Biden has promised to tackle criminal justice reform — including marijuana laws, and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris was an early supporter of the MORE Act, which would lay the groundwork for federal decriminalization by expunging marijuana convictions and prohibiting the denial of benefits on the basis of a “cannabis-event.”

Businesses in the $17 billion cannabis industry would benefit from full legalization with easier investment and banking opportunities, much of which is regulated federally. And state and federal governments may profit from a simpler tax scheme on the drug.

“If you don’t allow that legal operation, somewhere in the community, the sales will continue,” Chris Lindsey, a legislative analyst of Marijuana Policy Project, told Marketplace.

Lindsey compares current federal cannabis policy to alcohol prohibition in the 1920s. Prohibition made it federally illegal to produce, import, transport, and sell alcoholic beverages but consumers were safe from prosecution. This led to criminal organizations controlling a black market and — most importantly — gaining all the profits.

Increased medical knowledge and changes in social norms have meant that over the last decade attitudes towards medical cannabis have changed exponentially. After speaking to clinicians and patients studies have concluded that while it may have once been taboo, medical cannabis is now believed to be a legitimate medical therapy by some. It may be much more accepted but few studies have looked into how patients use medical cannabis and whether men and women see it differently. A new study has found that a significant number of women would use cannabis to treat chronic conditions and pain. 

The study, which was published in the Journal of Women’s Health assessed the gendered attitudes patients have towards medical cannabis. It found that after obtaining a medical cannabis card women are more likely to cut down or discontinue using prescribed medication and medical assistance. The study was supported by research that suggested that while men are more likely to be experienced cannabis users more generally, women are more likely to substitute prescribed medications and painkillers for medical cannabis. 

Cannabinoids are compounds found in cannabis. Research has suggested that they could be a great painkiller. PMS and PMDD, endometriosis and some gynecological cancers are some of the conditions which can cause intimate and pelvic chronic pain. The study revealed that a substantial number of women would be open to using medical cannabis to treat pain, especially if they’d used it before. 

It’s not completely clear as to why women are more likely to swap out prescribed medication for medical cannabis. However, past research has found that women engage with complementary or alternative medicine differently to men. Women are more likely to access preventative services, use alternative medicine to treat pain, mental health conditions or insomnia and for headaches and migraines. As medical cannabis has increasingly been seen as a safe and legitimate treatment and news of the opioid crisis has spread it may now fall under the category of complementary or alternative medicine. 

The researchers wrote, “the implication that women may conceptualize medical cannabis as complementary or alternative medicine merits further research, as this finding may be viewed as a consequence of patient experience with cannabis, and not only of shifting public attitudes toward it.” 

State legislators are rekindling efforts to open New Mexico to recreational marijuana production and sales, with an emphasis on economic opportunity amidst the turmoil of the coronavirus pandemic.

State Rep. Javier Martinez told a panel of lawmakers Tuesday that he will introduce legislation in 2021 to regulate and tax recreational marijuana, hewing closely to a proposal that won House approval earlier this year but died in the Senate without a floor vote.

Elections this year ousted several conservative-leaning Democratic state senators who opposed past legalization efforts. Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham last week reiterated her support for recreational marijuana as an opportunity to expand and diversify the state economy.

“I think the prospect for a recreational bill to pass this year are looking much better,” said Democratic state Sen. Jacob Candelaria of Albuquerque, a sponsor of past recreational marijuana and drug decriminalization initiatives. “What matters most is just the numbers (of potential supporters) in the New Mexico Senate. I think we just have better numbers.”

Candelaria, a medical marijuana patient and attorney who represents current cannabis business license holders, urged the Lujan Grisham administration to lift what he called artificial limits on medical marijuana production to avoid shortages and costly delays in new tax revenue if recreational marijuana is approved by the House and Senate, where Democrats hold majorities.

As consumers increasingly shift to online ordering, click-and-collect, curbside pickup, and delivery, dispensaries must begin leveraging digital advertising options to drive online orders, keep their brands top-of-mind, and increase total sales revenue.

Industry insiders believe Democrat-held Congress would likely take up the SAFE Banking and MORE Acts, generating long-term market effects.

Despite ongoing attempts by the Trump Administration to delay the transition, President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris are expected to take power on January 20, 2021, creating an impact on the cannabis stock market that could be substantial. 

A Biden/Harris presidency could prove beneficial for a surging cannabis reform movement and its market after a clean sweep across five states on Election Day. Still, financial and legal experts point out that cannabis reform relies on more than the White House. As such, a delay in both reform and market impact could occur. 

Power, Potential Reform Remains In The Balance

The Biden White House should provide the marijuana market a bump of some form. However, its scope hinges on Biden, a decriminalization proponent, and the U.S. Senate’s power, which remains in limbo until January when two runoffs in Georgia are held. 

The results will determine if the Democrats control both chambers of Congress or Biden’s opposition from cannabis opponent Mitch McConnell. 

Have you gotten swept up in the CBD craze? Careful. It may induce a positive drug test.

That’s according to findings from a clinic trial published last month in the journal JAMA Psychiatry. The findings, which comes via researchers at Harvard, “suggest that patients consistently using full-spectrum, hemp-derived products may have positive test results for THC-COOH on a urinary drug screen,” the authors of the study wrote.

“Despite limitations in sample size and diversity, these findings have important public health implications,” the researchers wrote in their conclusions. “It is often assumed individuals using hemp-derived products will test negative for THC. Current results indicate this may not be true, especially if assays are more sensitive than advertised, underscoring the potential for adverse consequences, including loss of employment and legal or treatment ramifications, despite the legality of hemp-derived products.”

The findings also help fill a gap in what the authors said has been a paucity of research on CBD.

“Despite the growing popularity of cannabidiol (CBD) products, specifically those derived from legal industrial hemp sources,” the authors said, “few studies have directly assessed whether the use of high-CBD products could yield positive results on urinary drug tests assessing cannabis use through the detection of [THC] metabolites.”

New research published in the peer-reviewed journal Addictionsuggests that contemporary cannabis may be up to 25 per cent stronger than cannabis from the ’70s.

The systematic review examined THC and CBD concentrations in cannabis from studies spanning nearly 50 years and multiple countries, including the US, U.K., France, Denmark, Italy, and the Netherlands.

Using a meta-regression analysis, researchers found that THC concentrations in “herbal cannabis”  increased, on average, by 0.29 per cent each year from 1970 to 2017. While THC concentrations in “cannabis resin” increased 0.57 per cent every year from 1975 t0 2017.

The study suggests that the amount of THC in herbal cannabis increased by 2.9 milligrams each year and 5.7 milligrams for cannabis resin, adding that five milligrams of THC is a “standard dose.”

In the case of CBD, concentrations remained stable in both herbal cannabis and cannabis resin.

Don’t worry. The absence of THC combined with the presence of rich cannabidiol compounds won’t make your dogs high.

Cannabidiol is one of the most active compounds found in hemp plants. You can learn more about this on here. Many studies have found out that it can balance the bodily functions of many mammals. When CBD stimulates the endocannabinoid system present in both humans and animals, it can help the body regain homeostasis.

Many pet owners administer cannabidiol to their furry friends because they find that the extract can help with many ailments. Some of the medical conditions in animals that CBD can provide relief for are anxiety, joint pains, backaches, cancer symptoms, seizures, digestive disorders, social withdrawal, stress, insomnia, irritability, mood disorders, and more.

During the recovery phase from surgery, a lot of pet owners have found that CBD seems to stimulate healing, and it has therapeutic benefits for many of our furry friends. At the end of your pet’s life, cannabidiol can also lessen the suffering, anxiety, and pain that your beloved canine or feline may be experiencing. You can learn more about CBD oil’s other benefits at HolistaPet where you can get more information about CBD oil’s potential uses. Some products are exclusively made for pets, so you may want to look for those as well.

About the Endocannabinoid System

A network of receptors is present in the endocannabinoid system, and it is found in the human and animal body.

The Alabama Department of Agriculture and Industries (ADAI) wants to remind eligible hemp growers and processors/handlers the deadline to apply for a hemp license for the 2021 crop is November 30, 2020 by 5:00 pm (CST). ADAI will accept hemp applications using their new online application system: agi.alabama.gov/hempapp.

Montana made recreational cannabis legal this past election, and now, they’ve begun the process of licensing, already looking ahead to the future of the recreational industry.