WeedLife News Network

Lawmakers in Virginia have passed two bills that prohibit law enforcement officers from conducting warrantless searches based solely on the odor of marijuana. The measures, Senate Bill 5029 and House Bill 5058, have been approved by both legislative bodies and await the signature of Democratic. Gov. Ralph Northam to become law.

Earlier this year, Virginia decriminalized possession of small amounts of marijuana by limiting penalties to a civil fine of $25. Jenn Michelle Pedini, the development director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) and the executive director of the group’s Virginia branch, said in a release on Monday that the two bills continue the state’s reform efforts, but more still needs to be done.

“While this will certainly decrease non-essential interactions between law enforcement and otherwise law-abiding Virginians, it is only by legalizing the responsible use of cannabis by adults that the Commonwealth can end its failed experiment with prohibition and begin repairing the decades of damage,” Pedini said.

According to the text of the bills, “no law-enforcement officer may lawfully search or seize any person, place, or thing solely on the basis of the odor of marijuana and no evidence discovered or obtained as a result of such unlawful search or seizure shall be admissible in any trial, hearing, or other proceeding.” Other provisions of the legislation limit the power of police to issue summonses for minor traffic offenses.

Advocates for the bills argue that police have long used the smell of cannabis, real or otherwise, as pretense for conducting warrantless searches. Attorney Todd Zinicola said that the courts are insulated from the extent of the abuse of power.

The Gentlemen, an action-comedy focused on an American ex-pat (played by Matthew McConaughey) who builds a cannabis empire in London and then tries to sell the business, is getting remade for television, reports Deadline.

Guy Ritchie, who wrote and directed the film, will also be writing and directing the TV adaptation.

“Miramax Television is thrilled to break new creative ground in our partnership with Guy Ritchie on The Gentlemen,” said Marc Helwig, Miramax’s head of worldwide television. “One of the most distinctive and prolific filmmakers working today and someone whose creativity I have admired for many years, we couldn’t be more excited to bring the cinematic journey of The Gentlemen forth into the realm of global premium television.”

The film, which was released in January of this year, grossed more than US$115 million worldwide. McConaughey plays the role of Mickey Pearson, an American millionaire who uses an auto body business, the aptly named THC Wheels, as a front for his cannabis business.

Gemma Jackson, the film’s set designer, told Hollywood Reporter that making the weed look real was one of the film’s biggest obstacles.

A partnership between Ilera Holistic Healthcare and Southern has paved the way for the release of two new cannabis tinctures in Louisiana designed to reduce autism spectrum disorder (ASD) symptoms, regardless of age.

Touted as the first medical marijuana (MMJ) product in the state, its release was made possible by scientific research, according to Louisiana-based Ilera Holistic.

The research shows that cannabis is “safe and effective on patients (including children) to treat ASD,” the company statement notes. Patients who use cannabis have reported significant improvement in quality of life, mood and sleep, as well as less reliance on other medications, it adds.

Louisiana exceeds “the national percentage of autism diagnoses, while at-risk and under-served patients still struggle to receive safe and effective healthcare,” Dr. Chanda Macias, Ilera Holistic CEO, notes in the statement.

Called HOPE, the product was formulated by Zelira Therapeutics and will be available through state-licensed MMJ pharmacies to patients and families who have a doctor’s prescription. The product is gluten-, dairy-, soy- and nut-free, pesticide-free and lab-tested. It will be available in a 1:1 THC:CBD tincture and a 5:1 THC:CBD tincture.

With an origin story stretching back millions of years, hemp is making an overdue appearance in Paleo diets.

Paleo purists may disagree, but the benefits of hemp — a plant with a known history dating back 28 million years ago to central Asia — are undeniable, according to Yes! Weekly. The Denisovans may have been the first human ancestors to make use of the crop 160,000 years ago but evidence of its ancient use dots history books from around the world.

“The cannabis plant seems to have been distributed widely from as early at 10,000 years ago, or even earlier,” said Tengwen Long, a researcher at the Free University of Berlin in Germany.

Hemp originates from cannabis sativa, the same plant that produces marijuana, but with just a fraction of the psychoactive substance THC, its recent road to legalization and expanded use has been much easier than that of marijuana.

The popular Paleo Diet encourages a return to the foods that would have been available 2.5 million years ago in the Paleolithic Age, such as fruits, meats, vegetables and nuts, and an avoidance of dairy and processed foods. With more than 25,000 known uses throughout human history — and hemp-made products now considered superfoods — the crop would seem an ideal fit.

Love strain-specific edibles but have a hard time finding them? You are not alone! As people learn more about the variety present in cannabis’ many strains, many find that only some of these options give them the effects they are looking for. For those strain-sensitive patients who prefer edibles, this can present a challenge. It’s not always easy to find the strains you need locally, but it can be almost impossible to find them in edibles. Since most edible companies leave the strain a mystery (or mix many strains together) it is hard to find specific strains when you need them.

Making edibles at home is a great way to bypass the problem but edible recipes can get complicated. Most people don’t want to labor over a pot for hours, constantly checking that the temperature is still in the perfect zone. If you have had a hard time making edibles at home, here are five shortcuts simplify this tasty task:

Use a Magical Butter Machine

Edible bases can be tricky to make, and usually involve a long infusing process where the temperature needs to be just right. The Magical Butter machine really simplifies this process. You put your decarboxylated marijuana and your butter into the machine and push a button. Two hours later, your perfectly infused butter is ready to go. Since it can help make many common bases like butter, oil, glycerin, honey, and alcohol, the Magical Butter machine can simplify almost any edible recipe.

Cook the Weed Right In

Infused oils aren’t the only way to make an edible. If you want to skip the process of making a base and get right to making your edibles, try these recipes that use the flower itself. Do you ever vape your favorite strains? This delicious pesto recipe turns the left over flower in your vape into a culinary experience. Or try turning your cannabis into canna-flour, with this zucchini bread recipe. The recipe teaches you how to grind up your preferred pot into a powdered form that can be baked right into your favorite treats.

Eat it Fresh

You can skip the cooking altogether by eating raw cannabis fan leaf. This not only simplifies your process, but you can also gain the benefits of the plant’s unaltered natural compounds like THCA. The most popular method for consuming the raw plant is juicing it. The juice can be mixed with other fruit or veggie juices for flavor and can be frozen in ice trays to preserve for later. Still, some skip the juicing all together and put the leaf straight into their salad. The high is fairly different from infused and decarboxylated edibles so you might also find that different strains work well for you fresh than when consumed other ways.

The legal cannabis industry continued to make inroads against its illicit counterparts, as one-quarter of all sales took place among regulated players in the first quarter of the year, according to new data from the Ontario Cannabis Store.

The provincial pot distributor's quarterly review showed that the province controlled a 25.1-per-cent share of the cannabis market in the fiscal first quarter of 2020, a slight uptick from the 24.7 per cent share observed in the previous quarter. The number lagged behind the national share for the legal market, according to OCS and Statistics Canada calculations.  

Instituting cannabis laws will likely have little effect on students, suggests a new study out of New Zealand that found using weed is part of their culture and no amount of rulemaking and finger-wagging is likely to change that.

Researchers at the University of Otago wanted to explore drug acceptability views among students and find out whether or not cannabis law in New Zealand, where recreational weed is illegal, has any influence on their use of marijuana.

The answer? Not really, notes a university news release.

Published in Substance Abuse: Research and Treatment, the findings indicate that consuming cannabis has been normalized in student culture, says Kirsten Robertson, a co-author of the study and an associate professor of marketing at the university.

That seems borne out by the 82 per cent of students who report their peers had used cannabis before, and about half that, 39 per cent, who note their peers used weed regularly.

Can These Pot Stocks Make Big Headway Next Year?

The Arkansas Department of Health’s website reports that there are 83,779 active medical marijuana cards in the state, but dispensaries and patients are seeing an unprecedented amount of shortages.

“We had to raise our prices because we had just too many people coming through the shop,” Owner of Green Springs Medical marijuana dispensary in Hot Springs, Dragan Vicentic, said. He said he’s seen the shortage at his dispensary since June. They have a list of 75 different strands of marijuana and he was out a dozen this week. He said the shortage is growing each week and it’s impacting patient’s health.

“It’s more expensive, they’re having to go back to the streets possibly to get it from the people on the black market which is a terrible idea,” Vicentic said.

Vicentic says a lot of doctors turned patients away from opioids to marijuana.

“They can’t go back to their doctors and get their prescriptions for opioids again because the doctors won't give them to them so it’s a huge deal for the patients,” Vicentic said.

Looking to increase availability to underserved areas of Delaware, a Request for Applications was issued by the state’s Medical Marijuana Program that would open four new compassion centers.

Delaware Office of Medical Marijuana Director Paul Hyland said more centers are needed because the program continues to expand.

According to data from the Division of Public Health, as of Sept. 3, there were 10,587 medical marijuana patients in Delaware. That’s roughly a 29 percent increase in patients since Columbia Care opened its Rehoboth dispensary in October 2019, and about a 278 percent increase since First State Compassion opened its Lewes dispensary in May 2017.

At the time of each opening, DPH provided the Cape Gazette with patient number information – there were 8,211 when Columbia Care opened and 2,802 when First State opened.

In an email Sept. 4, Hyland said the most common concern among cardholders is the lack of selection. Counting all the vendors together, he said, Delaware has about 34 different strains of marijuana. However, he continued, some patients desire a more varied selection.

New Zealand was poised to make history this year by putting the national legalization of cannabis to a vote, but now advocates are concerned that it won’t make the cut in 2020 due to all the issues that have shifted the focus this year. 

If legalization does get pushed through, cannabis would be legalized for recreational use for those over 20, and there would be regulations as to the growing and selling of cannabis. People would be able to purchase up to 14 grams a day and grow two plants per person. A “yes” vote means that Parliament will be able to pass the law if they choose to, and legal cannabis would be a viable possibility in the country. 

New Zealand would become one of the few countries in the world to have legalized, including Uruguay and Canada. However, many have stated concerns over poll numbers dropping when it comes to cannabis support. 

Studies show that more than $1.4 billion New Zealand dollars could be gained each year from legalizing cannabis, a major boost to the economy. This is based on the country having 400 new stores, 5,000 new jobs, and a spike in cannabis use when it becomes legal. 

However, thanks to the combination of COVID and the other major issues coming up this year, including a vote on euthanasia, which has been a huge moral battleground in New Zealand, there hasn’t been the kind of hype around legalization that one would expect to see on an average year.

When voters head to the polls this November, they’ll decide on a marijuana legalization initiative that’s appearing on the ballot in Arizona for the first time since 2016.

Medical marijuana has been legal in Arizona since 2010. More than 250,000 Arizonans are medical marijuana card holders today.

This year’s Smart and Safe Act, or Proposition 207, looks to decriminalize recreational use. If passed, adults 21 and older could legally use and buy the product, and possess it in limited quantities.

A similar measure narrowly failed in 2016. Prop. 207 spokesperson Stacy Pearson said the new bill is informed by criticisms of its predecessor.

"The most important example [of that] is the criticisms from the business community, who thought that the 2016 initiative did not go far enough in allowing employers to prohibit use by their employees," she said.

There are expected to be a number of fast-growing trends this decade, including cloud computing, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity. But don't sleep on marijuana.

After generating an estimated $10.9 billion in worldwide sales in 2018, legal channel cannabis sales are expected to hit anywhere from $50 billion to $200 billion a year by 2030, according to various Wall Street estimates. Yes, this is a pretty wide range, but it's to be expected of an industry that's never been legalized in the modern era, and which has tens of billions of dollar in activity occurring behind the scenes.

It's also an industry that could soon get a lot bigger in the United States. Currently, two-thirds of all states have given the green light to medical marijuana, with 11 of these states also allowing for the consumption and/or retail sale of adult-use weed. But in less than a month, we could see these figures tick higher.

The Nov. 3 election will feature five states with cannabis measures on their respective ballots. However, none is going to be more unique than what the Mount Rushmore State is presenting to its residents.

The Mount Rushmore State is four weeks away from making cannabis history

While we've witnessed a number of unlikely ballot measures before, South Dakota is about to do something no state has previously attempted: It's trying to legalize medical and recreational marijuana at the same time, albeit with two separate ballot measures.

The legal cannabis industry continued to make inroads against its illicit counterparts, as one-quarter of all sales took place among regulated players in the first quarter of the year, according to new data from the Ontario Cannabis Store.

The provincial pot distributor's quarterly review showed that the province controlled a 25.1-per-cent share of the cannabis market in the fiscal first quarter of 2020, a slight uptick from the 24.7 per cent share observed in the previous quarter. The number lagged behind the national share for the legal market, according to OCS and Statistics Canada calculations.  

The market share gains indicate that Canada's approach to legalizing pot for recreational use is gaining traction amongst consumers. Additional data showed household spending on legal cannabis in the second quarter of 2020 outpaced the illicit market for the first time 

"The growth of the market in terms of the volume of product sold and percentage of the illegal market captured are both inching upwards as a direct result of the collaboration between the OCS and its commercial partners – licensed producers and authorized cannabis retail stores," Cheri Mara, chief commercial officer of the OCS, said in a letter published with the agency's quarterly review. 

The OCS also said in its quarterly review that its $7.05-per-gram sale price for dried flower is now cheaper than the average price offered by illegal mail-order marijuana sites ($7.98). The discount comes as large-format 28-gram value offerings become increasingly popular in the legal retail market. Those products accounted for 3.9 per cent of all dried flower sales last quarter, nearly four times the total observed by the end of last year, the OCS said. 

Cannabis does not actually calm the digestive tract. Instead, this is how it treats nausea.

People around America more and more are using cannabis as a treatment for nausea, from cancer patients trying to combat the nausea that follows chemotherapy to expecting mothers trying to keep food down in the months before birth.

As more is discovered about the endocannabinoid system, scientists are coming closer to pinpointing exactly why cannabis helps to reduce nausea.

Nausea is a necessary function of the body, used primarily to alert the body that something it ate might be poisonous or rotten and should be avoided now and in the future, or that the body is experiencing an illness or imbalance and needs treatment or rest. For example, dehydration can trigger nausea because the body is trying to send a signal that it’s unbalanced and needs more water.

But there are other factors, like motion or certain medications, that will also increase the signals being sent to the brain from the rest of the body, many of which the brain interprets as nausea

With the green light given for a cannabis testing laboratory to begin operations, Missouri’s medical marijuana program supply chain is now complete and will soon be serving patients. Last week’s approval of EKG Labs in St. Louis comes nearly two years after voters legalized the medicinal use of cannabis with the passage of a constitutional amendment in November 2018.

Canopy Growth Corp., the cannabis company that attracted Corona beer producer Constellation Brands Inc. as an investor, is moving to bring cannabis beverages to the U.S. in 2021.

The drinks will contain THC, the psychoactive compound found in marijuana, in dosage amounts designed to keep people buzzed and social in a similar way to beer, cocktails or wine.

“Just as hard seltzer disrupted beer by providing a lighter, low calorie alternative, we believe cannabis beverages will be an attractive option for what have traditionally been alcohol-driven occasions and mood states,” said David Klein, Canopy’s chief executive officer, in an email exchange with Bloomberg News.

With cannabis prohibition on the decline and medical marijuana now legal in 33 states, it’s a great time for innovators to create new and exciting technology to improve how people cultivate and consume cannabis. 

However, it hasn’t always been this way. 

Bryan Buckley, who is the CEO and Founder of Helmand Valley Growers Company, explained the struggles of funding medical cannabis research during the early days of legalization on Episode 42 of the Cannabis Tech Talks podcast. 

“We’re playing a game as we’re still making up the rules, and we’re very comfortable being uncomfortable,” said Buckley. “When you really believe in something…you’ll figure out a way to make it work.” 

A lot of innovators could probably agree with Buckley’s statement.