WeedLife News Network

A recently released survey report states just 3.9% of Australians who used cannabis for medical purposes obtained it by prescription.

The Australian Government’s National Drug Strategy Household Survey has been conducted every 2 to 3 years since the first survey in 1985. In the 2019 survey, 2 new questions were included relating to the medical use of cannabis, which were:

The report states 6.8% of those surveyed who used cannabis only used it for medical purposes. Just 1.8% always had it prescribed and 2.1% sometimes had it prescribed.

Of those using cannabis medicinally, around half of this group had chronic pain. Older people were more likely than younger Australians to use cannabis only for medical purposes, with those aged 60 and over most likely to use cannabis for medical reasons only, while those in their 20s were least likely to.

People who used cannabis only for medical purposes were more likely to use oil (23% compared with 4.5% of those using it for non‑medical purposes) and much less likely to use leaf/flower (27% compared with 51%).

Buying cannabis products in the Czech Republic just got a lot more convenient.

Capital city Prague, along with Pasohlávky, Ostrava, and Olomouc, are all now home to their first automated cannabis-dispensing machines installed – and more are expected to dot the cities in the near future.

Unfortunately for cannabis-loving Czechs, there’s a catch.

The products with which the machines are stocked contain negligible levels of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the impairing compound in the cannabis plant, and are instead purchased for their high levels of cannabidiol (CBD).

They’re also not the first weed-dispensing ATMs. Neighbouring countries such as Austria and Poland have had similar machines installed for far longer, to the point that they’re considered commonplace and provoke no more public interest than a soda machine.

For many people, coffee is a crucial part of their morning routine (read: I can't function without large quantities of caffeine). While coffee can feel like magical get-stuff-done juice, too much of a good thing can leave you jittery, anxious, and seriously over-caffeinated. 

Cannabidoil (CBD), a non-intoxicating cannabinoid, can help solve that problem according to some consumers. Currently, CBD can be found in all kinds of products, from pet treats to skincare to CBD lattes at your local coffee shop. And CBD-infused beverages have made an especially large impact — Zenith Global projects that the market for CBD and hemp infused drinks will grow to over $1.4 Billion by 2024. 

Of the drinkable CBD products currently sold, CBD coffee is one of the most popular. Over the last several years, the number of coffee shops and cafés offering different CBD-infused coffee and espresso drinks has noticeably increased. For the dedicated coffee-drinker, the appeal seems obvious: all the focus and productivity of a solid caffeine rush without the impending doom of potential overindulgence. 

What is CBD Coffee?

CBD coffee, as you probably guessed, is a combination of coffee and cannabidoil. It can include different ingredients and be made into regular hot coffee, cold brew, and various other types of drinks. Coffee shops that offer CBD-infused options typically add CBD oil to coffee after it's brewed, while coffee brands add CBD (often in isolate form) to the coffee beans themselves. 

The amount of CBD per cup of joe will vary, but it's important to only buy from trusted retailers. Since CBD beverages are not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, companies don't always disclose how their CBD is extracted or exactly how many milligrams are in each serving. 

Research finds that CB1 receptors do have an impact on urination, and their manipulation with cannabinoids from marijuana has promise for treating OAB.

Thirty-three million Americans are living with overactive bladder disease or OAB. According to the National Association for Continence, OAB (sometimes called “spastic bladder”) is the “frequent and urgent need to empty your bladder.” 

More than 50% of individuals with OAB also struggle with Urgency Urinary Incontinence (UUI), which affects the quality of life for both men, women, and non-binary individuals. Studies have shown that many assume that OAB and UUI are part of the aging process and live with the conditions, not realizing that there are treatment options and often treatment options come with risks that make patients hesitate. 

The two medicines often prescribed for OAB are powerful and can cause constipation, blurred vision, hallucinations, seizures, and coma. Could CBD and THC have a place in addressing the disorder, without troublesome side effects? 

While OAB can’t be pinpointed to a single root cause, the central nervous system (which regulates impulse control and muscle memory) has a significant part to play. Often, damage to nerve fibers and receptors in the bladder can make the body more susceptible to bladder overactivity. From childbirth to aging, sports injuries to long-term illness, OAB can piggyback on another condition wreaking havoc with every sneeze or surprise. 

Thonburi Healthcare Group (THG) is teaming up with partners to research, develop and produce cannabis and hemp products for medical purposes.

The collaboration is outlined in a memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed with Srinakharinwirot University (SWU), Mahidol University and Kasetsart University.

THG chairman Dr Boon Vanasin said the MoU is aimed at developing and carrying out research on medical products from cannabis and hemp extracts that are easy to use, efficient and suitable in the treatment of many diseases.

The aim is to create quality medical-grade cannabis products that are affordable to the Thai people, said Dr Boon.

He said the project is being carried out in response to government legislation that allows private individuals and companies to grow hemp for commercial purposes.

Cannabis sales in Colorado set a new monthly record in May, reaching their highest level since broad legalization in 2014.

Dispensaries sold over $192 million worth of cannabis products that month, according to data from the state Department of Revenue’s Marijuana Enforcement Division compiled by The Denver Post. That figure is up about 29% from April and 32% from May 2019.

Cannabis sales in Colorado set a new monthly record in May, reaching their highest level since broad legalization in 2014.

Dispensaries sold over $192 million worth of cannabis products that month, according to data from the state Department of Revenue’s Marijuana Enforcement Division compiled by The Denver Post. That figure is up about 29% from April and 32% from May 2019.

Sales at medical and recreational marijuana shops hit monthly all-time highs, with just under $43 million and just over $149 million, respectively.

In all, the cannabis industry has sold more than $779 million in products so far this year and paid more than $167 million in taxes and fees to the state.

Colorado dispensaries were deemed essential businesses during the early days of the pandemic when there were statewide stay-at-home orders. So far, monthly cannabis sales this year have consistently outpaced 2019, which was the highest-grossing year on record.

The amendment, sponsored by Tulsi Gabbard, would supersede the Defense Department’s rule banning CBD for service members.

A longstanding zero-tolerance marijuana policy could be slowly eroding in the military. Earlier this month, a House committee approved a provision that would let troops who previously used cannabis to re-enlist. This week, Congress passed an amendment to allow service members the use of hemp and CBD products.

The amendment, sponsored by Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, was added to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and included several non-cannabis amendments. The House of Representatives approved the NDAA in a 336 to 71 vote Monday.

“The Secretary of Defense may not prohibit, on the basis of a product containing hemp or any ingredient derived from hemp, the possession, use, or consumption of such product by a member of the Armed Forces,” the amendment reads.

A memo that was recently made public revealed the Pentagon had quietly moved to make CBD use a punishable offense for military troops. The Department of Defense banned hemp and CBD products in all forms in February to ”protect the integrity of the drug testing program,” wrote Matthew Donovan, Acting Undersecretary for the Department of Defense. Previously, the Navy and Marine Corps. were permitted use of topical products, including shampoos and lotions.

Law enforcement data released by the California Department of Justice reveals that in 2019 the state recorded the lowest number of felony marijuana arrests since 1954, while showing that the racial disparity at play in such arrests continues to grow. 

In the department’s latest “Crime in California” report, law enforcement officials reported that 1,181 arrests for marijuana felonies were made in 2019, down 27% from 1,617 in 2018, the first year of legal recreational marijuana sales in the state. The data is not broken down by offense but includes such activities as unlicensed cannabis sales or cultivation and marijuana sales to minors.

While the total number of marijuana arrests declined last year, “the harassment went up,” said Donnie Anderson, the co-founder of the cannabis trade group California Minority Alliance.

In an analysis of the data, the California chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (Cal NORML) said that the 2019 number of felony marijuana arrests is the lowest total since 1954. A total of 3,769 misdemeanor marijuana arrests were also made last year, down slightly from the 3,835 arrests recorded in 2018.

The report also revealed that the racial disparity prevalent in the enforcement of the nation’s drug laws continues in California despite legalization. According to demographic information included with the arrest data, Hispanic people made up 42% of the felony marijuana arrests in the state last year, while Black people accounted for 22%. White people made up 21% of those arrested, while other groups accounted for 15% of arrests.

As Michigan's marijuana industry blooms, prices of both medical and recreational marijuana have steadily dropped.

According to the latest reporting from the state's Marijuana Regulatory Agency, the price per ounce of recreational marijuana was $516.21 in December, when the sales first started, and dropped to $409.76 in May, the most recent month that MRA reported. Meanwhile, medical marijuana was $267.30 per ounce in December and dropped to $251.50 in May. 

As of July 15, the state has authorized cultivators to grow 511,500 plants, a 20% increase from about two months earlier. The price of pot is expected to continue to drop as more licenses are granted, but MRA Director Andrew Brisbo says that the agency wants to avoid them falling too far. "What we need to be cautious about and be wary of is what happened in Oregon," he told MLive, "where the scale shifted and there was oversupply, because then the price kind of bottoms out."

In the past few years, the price of marijuana in Oregon plummeted due to a supply surplus, becoming the nation's cheapest weed. (One study found it would take at least six years for the state's 4 million residents to smoke the entire stock. Due to federal prohibition of marijuana, it's not possible to simply export it to other states.)

This year, the price of marijuana began to climb again in Oregon, due in part growers going out of business because of the supply-and-demand issues. 

Cannabis use continues to increase in popularity among adults 65 years of age and older in the United States. With the legalization of cannabis in many states for either medical or recreational purposes, there is growing interest in using it to treat a variety of long-term health conditions and symptoms common among older adults.   

More than ever, cannabis use is on the rise for seniors. Legalization has given seniors more access to information that has helped to soften their harsh views of weed and create curiosity where there was once only disdain.

Yet, even with more material about cannabis becoming mainstream some seniors may still struggle to bridge the gap between their interest and their apprehension when it comes to actually going to a dispensary to buy cannabis for themselves.

Sue Taylor remembers a time when propaganda promoting the fear of marijuana was at a fever pitch — she admits that she used to think cannabis was “just as bad” as heroin or cocaine.

“I never had any intention of getting involved in the cannabis industry. You know, ‘Reefer Madness’ really did a number on me and my generation.” Taylor says. “I was taught that it was a very bad drug that made people do bad things — especially Black people. And, at the time, I believed it.”

A sound explanation comes from a report by the World Health Organization, which examined many, many aspects of CBD, including its potential for abuse.

With CBD pens, edibles, shatter, medicines and oils continuing to crop up across the United States and around the world, a vehement anti-cannabis strain of people look for the “bad” in anything marijuana. That extends to cannabidiol, or CBD, a non-psychoactive wonder component of the cannabis plant.

In all reality, a completely reasonable person with no experience with marijuana besides what’s been institutionally taught could also wonder the same thing. People are puffing on CBD vape pens left and right and pretty much every retailer in America offers some type of CBD product. If it’s so appealing so often, is it habit forming?

The simple answer is. A sound explanation comes from a report by the World Health Organization (WHO), which examined many, many aspects of CBD, including its potential for abuse. “Single dose administration of cannabidiol has been evaluated in healthy volunteers using a variety of tests of abuse potential as well as physiological effects in a randomized double blind placebo controlled trial,” reads the report.

“An orally administered dose of 600mg of CBD did not differ from placebo on the scales of the Addiction Research Centre Inventory, a 16 item Visual Analogue Mood Scale, subjective level of intoxication or psychotic symptoms,” in continued.

Legislation to wipe convictions for possession of small amounts cannabis off the records was tabled in the House of Assembly.

The Expungement of Convictions Act was designed to remove the stigma of past convictions for people who were caught with small amounts of the drug before it was decriminalised three years ago.

Kathy Lynn Simmons, the Attorney-General and Minister of Legal Affairs, said cannabis laws had penalised young black men and damage their education and job prospects.

Ms Simmons added the 2017 Misuse of Drugs (Decriminalisation of Cannabis) Amendment Act decriminalised possession of 7g or less of cannabis.

She said on Friday: “At the time, the wider social justice policy objective was to discontinue the longstanding practice of criminalising individuals for personal cannabis use.

If you think the U.S. will soon legalize marijuana at the federal level, you're not alone. Canopy Growth CEO and former Constellation Brands CFO David Klein expects that it will happen in 2022. I've speculated that marijuana could be legalized nationwide as early as next year.

But could presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden be putting the brakes on the pot legalization train? Some might think so after reviewing recommendations from a task force that the former vice president formed along with Sen. Bernie Sanders. However, there's more to the story.

Slow-mo Joe?

The Biden-Sanders "unity task force" created a 110-page document chock-full of policy recommendations across a wide array of issues. Among the issues that the task force considered was marijuana legalization. Anyone hoping that the team would recommend full legalization of pot in the U.S. probably came away a little disappointed after reading the task force's document.

The task force called for the decriminalization of marijuana using executive action. This includes automatically expunging all previous marijuana convictions for the use and possession of marijuana. In addition, marijuana would be removed from the list of offenses for which individuals can be deported from the U.S.

There were no recommendations to completely legalize marijuana at the federal level. Will Biden will be "slow-mo Joe" when it comes to legalization if he adopts his task force's recommendations? Not really.

In early September 2019, President Trump expressed an urgency to ban vaping products.

In the wake of this announcement, the Center for Drug Control (CDC) reported that 1,299 confirmed and probable lung injury cases were associated with e-cigarette or vaping products.

In addition, the CDC confirmed 26 deaths related to vaping products. However, this wasn’t the first instance of bad press for vaping.

A History of the Vaping Crisis

Like many of today’s technologies, vaping and e-cigarettes seemed to skyrocket in popularity overnight. The credit is largely due to Juul.

Founded in 2015, the company set out to develop a cigarette alternative for those trying to wean themselves off of smoking. Since then, the company has become a verb, and in 2017 claimed over a third of the e-cigarette market, generating $224 million in revenue.

Earlier this week, the US Department of Agriculture approved hemp production plans under the nation’s Domestic Hemp Production Program for Minnesota, Tennessee and Puerto Rico.

The addition of the three brought the total number of state, territory and tribal plans approved so far to 53. These plans provide details on practices and procedures that enable local hemp producers to operate according to the relevant state plan and in compliance with federal laws.

Where a state doesn’t have a plan but will allow hemp production, a national plan will provide regulation and licencing. So far, one state is noted as having a USDA Hemp Producer License – New Hampshire. As we recently mentioned, Hawai’i will also head down this path.

Minnesota Agriculture Commissioner Thom Petersen welcomed the approval of his state’s plan, saying it was a major step forward – but noted ongoing concerns relating to regulations including hemp testing requirements. While the plan is now approved, Minnesota will continue to operate under its 2014 pilot program, which is permissible for this year. Minnesota is by no means alone in this – the USDA status list indicates 23 states have expressed their intention to operate under 2014 pilot programs.

Last year more than 7,300 acres and 400,000 indoor square feet of hemp crops were planted in Minnesota. This year, 511 people currently have grower and/or processor licenses, and  8,605 acres and 4.66 million indoor square feet of growing space is registered with the Minnesota Department of Agriculture.

According to a new report by The Denver Post, marijuana sales in Colorado set a new monthly record in May. The sales in May break a record that’s been in place since legal sales begin way back in 2014.

According to the report, licensed legal marijuana retail outlets and medical marijuana dispensaries sold $192,175,937 worth of products in May. This is based on data from the Department of Revenue’s Marijuana Enforcement Division. The Denver Post notes that these numbers mark 29% from April and an increase of 32% from May 2019.

Sales at both medical and recreational pot shops hit monthly all-time highs, at $42,989,322 and $149,186,615, respectively. Collectively, both sectors have sold more than $779 million in 2020 and paid more than $167 million in taxes and fees to the state.

Roy Bingham, co-founder and executive chairman of BSDA analytics firm, said a confluence of several factors caused by the pandemic are likely causing the increase in sales. For one, many people may have more leisure time and are spending more time at home, where cannabis is typically consumed. Existing marijuana consumers also are buying more each time they go to the dispensary, a trend that started with stocking up in March when Colorado went under a statewide stay-at-home order.

“Everyone has perhaps become more used to consuming a little more,” Bingham said.

After over a century of irresponsible treatment of our environment, our plant -humanity is in need of a quick solution. Hemp may just be one of the pieces to this giant puzzle.

Unfortunately, hemp didn’t have the opportunity to help us until recently due to poor regulation. Back in the 1930s, marijuana was criminalized as a dangerous substance that caused violent behaviors and had a high potential for addiction. When this happened, hemp was criminalized all the same even though it causes absolutely no psychoactive effects.

Hemp and marijuana are both apart of the cannabis sativa plant and, on a surface level, look almost identical. However, marijuana contains higher amounts of THC – the cannabinoid responsible for getting people “high” – while hemp contains higher amounts of CBD. It’s unclear whether or not people were aware of this information when cannabis was criminalized.

But what was most certainly common knowledge was all the different uses hemp had. This plant is one of the most versatile found in the wilderness and can be used for 20,000 different necessities, from food to rope to clothing.

In the last two decades, hemp has become a mainstream topic of discussion again. People have finally woken up to the ridiculousness of having such a robust plant be criminalized. And maybe they’ve done so just at the right time.

As COVID-19 puts a crunch on the state’s coffers, the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration is targeting California’s multi-billion dollar underground cannabis economy to get a piece of the pie.

CDTFA announced last week it has taken  sweeping actions against 12 illegal cannabis retailers across SoCal, from Los Angeles to San Bernardino County, in recent weeks. The CDTFA served tax warrants to the dozen in collaboration with the California Highway Patrol, who also assisted with the investigations.

In the process of the tax raids, the state also seized nearly a million dollars in pot products on top of $100,000 in cash. CDTFA said that money will go toward the tax liabilities involved with the various retailers.

“The CDTFA’s collaboration with the CHP is an important deterrent to tax evasion,” stated CDTFA Director Nicolas Maduros said in a statement announcing the actions. “Tax evasion unfairly shifts the burden onto all other taxpayers and makes it tough for those businesses that are playing by the rules to survive.”

CDTFA went on to note that under the California Revenue and Taxation Code, if you are willfully evading or attempting to evade the cultivation tax, the cannabis excise tax or the sales tax you’re committing a crime. But it’s worth noting these actions target retailers that were completely illegal, as opposed to anyone who may be fudging the numbers in a legal operation to mail a few packages East.