Cannabis Facts
Court Ruling Highlights Federal, State Discord Over Medical Marijuana
In 1991, amid the AIDS crisis in San Francisco, a former jazz and blues singer named Lynnette Shaw was hired as the intake officer at the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club, California’s first medical marijuana dispensary.
The modest Cannabis Buyers Club would eventually transform into a flamboyant weed emporium on Market Street that founder Dennis Peron dubbed “the five-story felony.” Shaw, who would partner with Peron in backing California’s Proposition 215 medical marijuana law, went another direction months before the initiative passed in 1996. She ventured across San Francisco Bay to establish California’s first locally permitted and regulated medical marijuana provider.
Peron eventually drew the ire of state narcotics officers, who raided his club. Shaw and her small-town marijuana dispensary, serving patients with HIV, cancer and other illnesses, drew something else: a nearly two-decade legal battle with the United States Justice Department.
In 2011, over protests from local officials, a federal seizure order shuttered the Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana in the Marin County hamlet of Fairfax. Shaw was left destitute, ultimately living on welfare and food assistance.
But on Oct. 19, Shaw won a major court ruling that marijuana advocates hail as a potentially landmark rebuke to federal drug policies and government interference in states where cannabis is legal for medical or recreational use.
In a sternly written decision, U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer in San Francisco threw out a federal injunction against the Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana. He ruled that the Justice Department was defying the will of Congress and improperly intruding on California’s medical marijuana laws.
This week, Shaw, who still lives in Fairfax, was celebrating and making plans to reopen the historic dispensary, launched in 1996 and licensed by the city in 1997. “I am looking at my Facebook page,” Shaw said. “I’m getting thousands of messages right now. I’m getting cheered all over the world.”
Breyer’s ruling was seen as a major test for an amendment to federal appropriations bills signed by President Barack Obama in 2014 and again this year that banned any expenditure of Justice Department funds to prevent states from implementing laws “that authorize the use, distribution and possession of medical marijuana.”
Marijuana advocates and the two California representatives who sponsored the amendment – Reps. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Huntington Beach, and Sam Farr, D-Carmel – called its passage an end to federal raids on medical marijuana providers in the Golden State and beyond.
But federal authorities, who in 2011 had launched sweeping raids and property forfeiture actions against California dispensaries, argued in court briefs that the Justice Department retained the right to enforce federal law against individuals or businesses. U.S. prosecutors said such criminal and civil “actions do not prevent a state from implementing its own laws” on marijuana.
Breyer last week provided a blistering rejection of the government’s argument. “It defies language and logic for the government to argue that it does not ‘prevent’ California from ‘implementing’ its medical marijuana laws by shutting down these same heavily regulated medical marijuana dispensaries,” he wrote.
Breyer’s ruling added: “Californians’ access to legal medical marijuana has been substantially impeded by the closing of dispensaries, and the closing of MAMM (the Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana) in particular.”
Months before the judge’s ruling, Rohrabacher and Farr had sent a pointed letter to then-U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. They took issue with public statements by Justice Department officials that they retained the right to prosecute medical marijuana cases in states, such as California, with legal medicinal use.
“As the authors of the provision in question, we write to inform you that this interpretation of our amendment is emphatically wrong,” the California representatives wrote Holder on April 8. “Rest assured, the purpose of our amendment was to prevent the Department from wasting its limited law enforcement resources on prosecutions and asset forfeiture actions against medical marijuana patients and providers, including businesses that operate legally under state law.”
After Breyer’s ruling, Shaw’s attorney, Greg Anton, declared: “The war on marijuana is winding down – and marijuana won.”
Unsettled landscape
Shaw’s battle with the government began in 1998, when the Justice Department won a court ruling to shutter the Marin Alliance and five other California dispensaries for violating the federal Controlled Substances Act by distributing medical marijuana.
Yet the government never enforced the injunction and the dispensary stayed open as Shaw filed legal appeals and even ran as a Libertarian and “marijuana peace” candidate for lieutenant governor in 2006, winning 142,851 votes – just under 2 percent – in the November general election.
In December 2011, then-U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag in San Francisco threatened Marin Alliance’s landlord with seizure of the property in addition to up to 40 years in federal prison for drug dealing by providing medical marijuana within 1,000 feet of a Little League field.
The town of Fairfax protested. Then-Mayor Larry Bragman wrote Haag that the medical marijuana provider was legally operating under 84 permit conditions “in a model of effective local oversight.” In follow-up correspondence, Bragman said the dispensary was a critical provider of medicinal relief in a Marin County region with “exceptionally high rates of breast and prostate cancer.”
Nevertheless, the dispensary closed in 2011 under the federal threats.
Shaw said she never earned more than $30,000 a year from the small cannabis club, which at its peak employed seven people and provided marijuana for 2,000 patients a month from some 45 medicinal cultivators.
With her dispensary closed and Shaw barred from working in the cannabis industry as she pursued legal appeals, she went broke. She said she took in as many as four roommates at a time to keep from losing her house to foreclosure.
After last week’s ruling, Shaw said she is looking for investors and engaging Fairfax officials about reopening the dispensary somewhere in town.“I’m now fed-proof!” said Shaw, 61. “Fed-proof nationwide. Thank God!”
But the legal landscape may remain unsettled for Shaw as well as other medical marijuana providers and businesses.
Federal authorities still are pressing a civil case to shutter Oakland’s Harborside Health Center, a massive dispensary that claims to serve 120,000 clients as the largest marijuana provider in the world.
In 2012, Haag filed a property forfeiture case, saying “marijuana superstores such as Harborside” pose a threat to California’s medical marijuana laws by increasing the likelihood of putting “marijuana in the hands of individuals who do not have a demonstrated medical need.”
Steve DeAngelo, Harborside’s executive director, said Breyer’s ruling in the Marin Alliance case means the Justice Department can’t spend any funds to pursue the case based on Congress’ order.
“Our position is they now are prevented from even sending a lawyer into court to argue to close Harborside down,” DeAngelo said. “The only thing they can do is drop the case. Congress has spoken. Obama has signed the bill. It is time for this travesty to end.”
‘They have to obey Congress’
Yet in a conflicting case in eastern Washington, U.S. District Judge Thomas Rice this month imposed federal prison sentences of 12 months to 33 months on three medical marijuana defendants in a group that cannabis advocates dubbed the Kettle Falls Five.
The defendants claimed they were legal medical marijuana patients in a state where both medical and recreational use is permitted. But U.S. prosecutors said their more than 100 total plants violated Washington state’s 15-plants-per-person medical cultivation limit and left them open to federal prosecution for growing marijuana for profit, a charge the defendants denied.
Matt Kumin, a San Francisco cannabis industry lawyer, said he expects the Justice Department to appeal the Marin Alliance case to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, where he said a positive ruling for Shaw is far from assured.
In July, the 9th Circuit Court in San Francisco ruled against a dispensary in that city, the Vapor Room, in a key tax case. The Vapor Room had sought to escape a federal tax statute, which bars business deductions for illegal narcotics trafficking. The Vapor Room argued it was a legally permitted business under California marijuana law. The court said the federal tax statute still applies.
“I have a feeling the 9th Circuit is not going to be friendly,” said Kumin, who said he fears a legal reversal for the Marin Alliance. “I’m not optimistic. That said, every victory we get is huge. The cat is out of the bag. The wall continues to fall.”
For her part, Shaw insists Breyer’s ruling means the wall has indeed fallen – and she is victorious over the federal drug enforcement establishment.
“I’ve never read a decision like this that was just so blazing,” Shaw said. “How are they going to appeal? They have to obey Congress. This decision ends the marijuana war. It really does.
“They ruined my life. But guess what? The truth has set me free.”
News Moderator: Jacob Redmond 420 MAGAZINE ®
Full Article: Court Ruling Highlights Federal, State Discord Over Medical Marijuana
Author: Peter Hecht
Contact: Email The Author
Photo Credit: Manny Crisostomo
Website: The Sac Bee
Is Marijuana The New Organ Transplant Miracle Medicine?
After decades of studying marijuana’s potential risks, the scientific community is making a great effort to understand all of the possible benefits it could offer. This is no great surprise, considering the overwhelming support the marijuana industry now has from the American public.
Support For Marijuana Gains Steam
According to three national polls – Gallup, Pew Research, and General Social Survey – a slim majority of Americans have a favorable view of marijuana. In smaller, often state-based polls that focus solely on medical marijuana, the favorable view of the drug jumps in many instances to well over 70%. Consumers want terminally ill and chronically suffering patients to have access to marijuana if it could relieve their symptoms or cure their disease.
On the other hand, a number of states have also backed ongoing research into marijuana for medical purposes. Marijuana is a taxable product, and while it’s illegal at the federal level, it offers another revenue stream for states that may be struggling to balance their budget. This is why we’ve seen 23 states (plus Washington, D.C.) legalize medical marijuana and four states (plus Washington, D.C.) OK the sale of marijuana to adults for recreational purposes.
But the primary focus on marijuana recently has been its safety and benefits profile. Countless studies have emerged showing a correlation between marijuana use and reduced symptoms and severity associated with select diseases.
Recently, we learned of an entirely new potential benefit of marijuana: organ transplant rejection delay.
Is Marijuana The New Organ Transplant Wonder Drug?
As published in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology by researchers at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine, the cannabinoid tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), which you probably know best as the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, may help lengthen the time it takes for incompatible organs transplanted into a patient to be rejected.
To test their theory, researchers analyzed two groups of mice with markedly different genetic make-ups and transplanted skin from one group of mice onto the other group, and vice versa, to ensure that there would be a transplant rejection. One group was administered THC, while the control group was given a placebo. The results demonstrated that the mice given THC delayed the rejection of the skin graft longer than the control group by “reducing T-cell proliferation … and decreasing early stage rejection indicator cytokines.” Additionally, this improved the survival of the grafted skin despite its being incompatible.
One of the co-authors of the study, Dr. Mitzi Nagarkatti, had this to say:
We are excited to demonstrate for the first time that cannabinoid receptors play an important role in the prolongation of rejection of a foreign graft by suppressing the immune response in the recipient. This open up a new area of research that would lead to better approaches to prevent transplant rejection as well as to treat other inflammatory diseases.
Of course, as a word of caution, the researchers also note that this study was based on a mouse model, which offers no guarantee that the results would be replicated in larger animals or humans. It’s also worth pointing out that among drugs that work on animal subjects, 90% fail in human testing. Researchers concluded that additional testing would be the most prudent course of action.
Before You Get Your Hopes Up…
Although many tests of medical marijuana have shown encouraging results, don’t start lobbying to make the substance a panacea until you’ve considered a few other points.
First, marijuana isn’t always a successful therapy, according to pharmaceutical and university-based clinical studies. GW Pharmaceuticals, the leading researcher of cannabinoids from the cannabis plant, reported in January that its first of three clinical studies involving Sativex to treat advanced cancer pain didn’t meet statistical significance. To be fair, GW has also had a lot of early success with another cannabinoid-based experimental drug, Epidiolex, which has reduced the frequency of seizures in two rare forms of childhood-onset epilepsy by more than 50%. Still, the point is that pharmaceutical-based cannabinoid research is no guaranteed slam-dunk.
A recent study from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health also demonstrated that marijuana could actually be responsible for an increase in instances of prediabetes. To be clear, no correlation was made between marijuana and diabetes diagnoses (in fact, a prior study from a separate group of researchers suggested that marijuana actually helped lower blood sugar levels), but the University of Minnesota study did show that participants who used marijuana a lot in their adolescent years had a 40% higher chance of developing prediabetes by the time they reached middle age.
Further, the federal government currently seems adamant that marijuana remain a schedule 1 drug. President Obama, a number of presidential hopefuls, and many members of Congress are more than willing to see how the experiment of state-based regulation works within select states, and most want to see what sort of safety profile marijuana demonstrates in long-term clinical studies. However, we’re simply not there yet.
After decades of research examining the potential risks of marijuana, we’ve only recently witnessed a rise in the number of studies examining its benefits profile. This is a big puzzle that will take time to solve, and it’s unlikely marijuana will be a go-to therapy with your primary care provider or surgeon anytime soon.
In short, marijuana may one day unlock benefits for a broad scope of patients suffering from specific diseases, but we’re probably a long way from finding out whether the currently illegal drug is completely safe from a medical standpoint and whether Congress will act to change its stance on the drug. Until we have better clarity on both points, your best bet as an investor is to stay firmly planted on the sidelines.
News Moderator: Jacob Redmond 420 MAGAZINE ®
Full Article: Is Marijuana The New Organ Transplant Miracle Medicine?
Author: Sean Williams
Contact: Contact Page
Photo Credit: Steep Hill Labs, Inc
Website: The Motley Fool
Research Says Marijuana Is Not A Gateway Drug
Contradicting the common belief that weed is a gateway drug, a researcher has claimed that smoking pot does not necessarily cause addiction to other drugs.
While interacting with the people on Reddit, Psychiatrist Kevin Hill of the Harvard University said that early use of any of these substances (marijuana, alcohol, nicotine) increased the likelihood of future addiction.
Hill said that any use of such substances among young people should be taken seriously. However, added that early marijuana use did not mean that a child was doomed.
Currently, there is conflicting research over links between cannabis and subsequent addiction to harder drugs, such as cocaine or heroin.
The National Health Service of United Kingdom stated that most of the people who used harder drugs, like heroin had used cannabis, and only a small proportion of people who used cannabis go on using hard drugs.
On the other hand, it also states that buying cannabis brings you into contact with the illegal drugs trade, making it more likely that you will be exposed to other drugs.
According to a U.S. survey conducted in 2012, 60 percent of cannabis users do go on to try other drugs, however 88 per cent of drug users’ first drug was alcohol.
News Moderator: Jacob Redmond 420 MAGAZINE ®
Full Article: Marijuana May Not Be A Gateway Drug
Author: Web Staff
Contact: Contact Page
Photo Credit: Rich Pedroncelli / The Associated Press
Website: IBC World News
Study Highlights Potential Public Health Benefits Of Medical Cannabis
Cannabis has been long maligned as an addictive narcotic that could lead to serious health issues, but a UBC and University of Victoria study demonstrates that more people are using cannabis as a substitute for prescription drugs and alcohol.
And that may be a good thing, says UBC Okanagan Assoc. Prof. Zach Walsh.
“Our study shows that more than 80 per cent of medicinal cannabis users reported substituting cannabis for prescription drugs including opiate pain killers,” says Walsh, who’s the primary investigator of the Cannabis Access for Medical Purposes Survey (CAMPS), the largest Canadian survey of medical cannabis patients to date.
“This is consistent with recent findings from the US that indicates medical cannabis use had a role in a nearly 25 per cent reduction in opioid overdose deaths — which is a really big deal given the crisis Canada faces with prescription opioid use,” says Walsh, noting Canadians are amongst the highest users of opiate-based drugs.
The study also found that 51 per cent of the 473 respondents report substituting cannabis for alcohol, and 33 per cent suggest they use cannabis instead of illicit substances like cocaine and crystal meth.
The CAMPS study, which provided data on cannabis substitution, was supported with a grant from UBC Okanagan’s Institute for Healthy Living and Chronic Disease Prevention. Walsh, who teaches psychology with the Irving K. Barber School of Arts and Sciences, worked with the University of Victoria’s Philippe Lucas, a Research Scholar with the Centre for Addictions Research of B.C.
“While cannabis use can certainly be problematic for some individuals, these findings highlight the potential of cannabis to be an ‘exit drug’ to addiction rather than a gateway drug,” says Lucas, VP of Patient Research and Services for Tilray, and the lead author of the publication. “Used properly, cannabis can substitute for potentially more harmful substances like alcohol, prescription drugs, and illicit substances, and therefore reduce the public health and safety impacts of those substances on individuals and on society as a whole.”
Legal access to cannabis might affect the broader social costs related to the use of both legal and illicit psychoactive substances, says Walsh. That’s why a comprehensive analysis of the consequences of cannabis use must recognize potential effects on the use of other psychoactive substances such as prescription drugs, alcohol, and illicit substances.
“We need to compare the risks and benefits of using other substances, such as opiates or alcohol, to the risks and benefits of cannabis use to estimate the real public health consequences of cannabis use,” says Walsh. “Looking at cannabis use in isolation paints an incomplete picture.”
More importantly, says Walsh, with increased recognition of the legitimate therapeutic use of cannabis, it’s time to re-examine Canada’s laws and openly discuss the potential costs and benefits of creating legal access to cannabis outside of the medical system.
“If you want to make informed choices about pain control, I think use of cannabis is a right that every Canadian should have,” says Walsh. “It’s been proven to be much less harmful and addictive than opiates or substances like alcohol.”
News Moderator: Jacob Redmond 420 MAGAZINE ®
Full Article: Study Highlights Potential Public Health Benefits Of Medical Cannabis
Author: Patty Wellborn
Contact: Contact Page
Photo Credit: Darren Hull
Website: The University Of British Columbia
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