Study points to cannabis' effect on emotion processing
According to researchers, cannabis significantly affects users’ ability to recognize, process and empathize with human emotions like happiness, sadness and anger.
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According to researchers, cannabis significantly affects users’ ability to recognize, process and empathize with human emotions like happiness, sadness and anger.
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On Monday, the Native American footprint in the cannabis industry got a little bigger.
The Las Vegas Paiute Tribe announced that it is partnering with Ultra Health, a medical marijuana production business based in Scottsdale, Arizona, to open two dispensaries and a cultivation facility in Nevada, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Paiute leaders and Ultra Health officials broke ground Monday on what they say will be 4,000-square-foot dispensary on their tribal lands near Las Vegas….
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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Puerto Rico’s governor has called for the legalization of marijuana during his last public address as leader of the U.S. territory.
Alejandro Garcia Padilla said Monday that taking such action would lower crime and target hypocrisy. He said legislators should at a minimum approve a bill filed in 2013 that would decriminalize marijuana. Puerto Rico’s Health Department recently adopted a regulation allowing the cultivation, manufacturing and distribution of…
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Texas could become one of the next big cannabis markets, if state lawmakers listen to their constituents and a growing number of businesspeople interested in the trade.
To bolster that possibility, a whopping 71% of Texans back expanding medical cannabis availability (it’s currently legal only for those with epilepsy) to help more patients, according to a new poll.
The soonest that could happen, however, would be 2017, since the Texas Legislature doesn’t convene in 2016. But when it does…
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Also on the House “Crossover Day” calendar: a bill that expands the list of medical conditions for which patients can use medical marijuana, but does not contain a provision to legalize the growing of marijuana for medical purposes in the state.
A proposal to allow fantasy sports sites to operate legally in Georgia did not receive a floor vote. Now, they must source their liquid from other…
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Cannabist Staff
Featured guests: Chris Connors, COO of America’s First Brands and Jake Salazar, owner of MMJ America
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
LOTS TO TALK ABOUT
• We dive into some of the issues with marketing cannabis cigarettes, and why a marijuana aficionado might prefer them to pre-roll joints.
• How can a cannabis brand expand to other…
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By Matt Volz, Associated Press
HELENA, Mont. — The Montana Supreme Court ruled Thursday that medical marijuana providers should be paid for their services, but it clamped down on commercial sales of the drug by limiting providers to no more than three patients each.
The court’s decision upheld other provisions of a 2011 state law that represents one of the most…
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By Marina Riker, Associated Press
HONOLULU — With less than five months to go before medical marijuana dispensaries can open in Hawaii, business owners could be facing unique obstacles in a state of islands separated by federal waters.
Dispensaries can open as soon as July 15, but industry experts say they could be confronted with challenges unlike those in…
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WHITE RIVER JUNCTION, Vt. — Authorities say a second-grader’s story about helping a farmer grow “special medicine” plants led to a man’s arrest in a Vermont marijuana bust.
The Times-Argus reports that Windsor Detective Jennifer Frank said in an affidavit that the 8-year-old told school officials and police that he got to help his mother’s boyfriend…
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The Montana Supreme Court dealt a huge blow to thousands of patients last week in the legal challenge to the state’s medical marijuana law. Under the ruling, medical marijuana providers, known as caregivers, will be limited to two patients — or three if the caregiver is also a patient. By comparison, the average caregiver in Montana serves 14 patients.
In addition, the court ruled that doctors who recommend medical marijuana to 25 or more patients in a 12-month period…
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The lottery system used to award medical cannabis licenses in Arizona is at least partly to blame for a reported deluge of business lawsuits regarding the industry, but there are other problems the state will have to face as well as it prepares to issue new dispensary licenses this summer.
A lack of access to banking, unchecked expectations and partnering with strangers are also among the reasons lawsuits are plaguing the state’s MMJ landscape, according to the Arizona Daily Star.
It’s an…
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New Mexico’s medical marijuana program overseers are set to identify the state’s licensed MMJ producers publicly for the first time.
On Monday, the names of the 35 licensed nonprofit producers of MMJ were posted online, along with the addresses of 23 that are open to date. The information possibly raises the risk of attempted burglaries at dispensaries, but also potentially delivers further legitimacy to the state’s industry via public disclosure.
The full list of licensees can be viewed…
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Vincent Piperato, 5, who has Dravet syndrome, uses a tablet while his mother, Amy, looks on and sister Alexa, 9, does her homework at home in Thiells. The family is struggling to find a physician willing to prescribe Vincent medical marijuana.(Photo: Tania Savayan/The Journal News)Buy Photo
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Claudia Bonifer suffered two bouts of very, very bad nausea after her chemotherapy treatment for ovarian cancer.
“It can be quite awful when it does (happen)” the 49-year old told The Huffington Post Australia.
But she feels luckier than some other patients because, for the most part, her attacks of nausea are latent and comparatively mild.
Regardless, she has welcomed the news that New South Wales will soon host its third medical cannabis trial, the largest of its kind in the world,…
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The Register’s Editorial
4 a.m. CST February 27, 2016
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By Jake Browne, The Cannabist Staff
Anyone who has heard five minutes of hack comedy about being high has heard the old adage about not shopping whilst stoned.
Speaking as someone who loathes every part of the consumer experience, from an abundance of mediocre products competing for attention to the malaise of strangers going through the motions, smoking a little…
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A cannabis convention will take center stage in Fort Worth this weekend. Thousands are expected to attend, including some big name medical marijuana advocates.
Event organizers admit, Fort Worth isn’t the first place you’d think to hold the Southwest Cannabis Conference and Expo, but say they’ve had a warm welcome.
The event runs Saturday and Sunday at the Fort Worth Convention Center. 235 vendors will cater to an estimated six-thousand people.
Organizers say the event is about more than just the plant, and the majority of vendors are…
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By Matt Volz, Associated Press
HELENA, Mont. — Marijuana dispensaries will have at least two weeks to prepare for severe rollbacks to Montana’s medical marijuana law, though most will likely have to shut down, the head of an advocacy group that tried to block the restrictions said Friday.
On Thursday, the Montana Supreme Court upheld nearly all of the…
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This week’s state Supreme Court’s ruling, which upholds most of the 2011 Montana Marijuana Act, could throw 40 shops out of business in Southwest Montana.
In Butte-Silver Bow County alone, 24 medical marijuana providers are in jeopardy.
But it’s not just the providers whose livelihoods are threatened.
In Southwest Montana, the ruling will affect 1,874 patients, according to Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services’ website.
In…
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For decades, marijuana was an illegal drug throughout the United States, and treated as something never to be tampered with. But times have changed, and Maryland officials are now looking to issue licenses to distribute and prescribe cannabis for medicinal use.
In 2013, the state passed legislation permitting medical marijuana growth, distribution and processing and a special commission is now working on distributing permits for the…
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Church officials announced several weeks ago that they anxious the plan would have unintended consequences.
Utah’s Senate spent almost an hour on Friday debating the plan as the bill’s sponsor, Republican Sen. While stopping short of endorsing it, the church said added restrictions to the plan late last week were substantial improvements.
The restrictive extract plan that the church has not opposed is seen by some conservative Utah legislators as a safer option than the wide-ranging medical marijuana laws that more than 20 other states have…
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Peter Dunne
The guidelines for considering applications from people
wanting to use cannabis for medical purposes will be reviewed,
Associate Health Minister Peter Dunne has announced.
Mr Dunne said the need for “fine-tuning” was inevitable,
given that medical cannabis was a new policy area for the
Ministry of Health and wider medical profession.
“The guidelines were set up at my request following the Alex
Renton case in 2015, so far the only…
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Friday morning marked the beginning of a notable experiment for Humboldt County as a small group of medical marijuana growers stood before the doors of the county Planning and Building Department in Eureka in hopes of obtaining government approval.
For many of the cannabis farmers standing in line, the chance came as a relief following nearly 20 years of obscure guidelines passed down by California’s 1996 voter initiative Proposition 215, which legalized medicinal…
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A U.S. District Court Judge in Colorado ruled this month that legal marijuana is insurable under commercial property policies, according to Lexology.com.
The ruling came in a case in which the plaintiff, The Green Earth Wellness Center, which operates a medical cannabis dispensary and growing facility in Colorado Springs, sought claims under a commercial property and general liability insurance policy issued by the Atain Specialty Insurance Company. The claim was filed after smoke and ash…
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That title, of course, refers to the most recent Republican debate, where in a fit of frustration the caption writers at CNN just gave up and ran “Unintelligible yelling” as the caption. Yep, that about sums it up, doesn’t it?
In two-and-a-half hours of mostly-unintelligible yelling, there was little discussion of anything that hadn’t been covered — multiple times — in pretty much every single other Republican debate. Oh, sure, there were amusing moments, such as Ben Carson’s criteria for picking Supreme Court justices (“The fruit…
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So it would be really helpful to have another class of health care professionals who can make the recommendations,” said Gibson, from the Drug Policy Forum of Hawaii and the Medical Cannabis Coalition of Hawaii. Sen. Josh Green, a physician, said he hopes …
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The state’s medical cannabis program is about to become a lot more transparent. Ten months after it rejected SFR’s request to review dozens of new grower license applications, the Department of Health says it will release information on the licensees for the first time.
According to a post on the department’s website, Health Secretary Retta Ward has accepted the recommendation of a public hearing officer to amend the program’s rules. Gov. Susana Martinez ordered the…
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SALT LAKE CITY — Utah veterans expressed support Friday for Sen. Mark Madsen’s medical marijuana bill as a treatment option for post-traumatic stress disorder.
Pete Haglin, a former paratrooper, shared his own journey with PTSD.
“When we volunteered, we knew what that entailed. We knew what it meant to be a paratrooper. We know that paratroopers fight, that paratroopers die. We were prepared for that,” he said.
“What we weren’t prepared for was some of the struggles we would face back home in dealing with some of the aftereffects. Once…
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Alaska opened its adult use marijuana business license application process on Wednesday, with 68 businesses starting their online paperwork, according to a release from the state’s Alcohol and Marijuana Control Office.
The state’s Marijuana Control Board (MCB) will likely start reviewing applications that were submitted this week by mid-March, the release said. There is no cap on how many licenses will be awarded, and no application deadline. Instead, the board will accept applications on…
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By Michelle L. Price, The Associated Press
SALT LAKE CITY — A plan to legalize the use of edible, vapor and topical marijuana products by those with chronic conditions cleared a key vote in Utah’s Senate on Thursday after the Mormon church relaxed some of its opposition to the measure.
The plan from a Republican lawmaker picked up a few more votes of support…
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We are told it’s better to give than to receive, but when it comes to oral sex, that’s not always the case. A recent study published in The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality found women are more than twice as likely to go down on their partners than men, but they are less likely to enjoy performing the act.
Oral sex has become more commonplace in sexual encounters among people of all ages. Prior to the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s, it was just considered taboo, an act reserved for homosexuals or prostitution. Now, “going…
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By John Schroyer and Omar Sacirbey
Connecticut dispensaries get good news, Canadian MMJ producers learn that they might see increased competition from home grows, and a former U.S. attorney general says it’s time to reschedule cannabis at the federal level.
Here’s a closer look at several notable developments in the marijuana industry over the past week.
Connecticut Rising
A state legislative committee this week announced that it is adding six new conditions to the list of ailments that…
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Rep. Mike Regan, Guest Writer
4:15 p.m. EST February 26, 2016
This legislative session has been a difficult one, with a drawn-out and contentious debate about the budget and slow progress on an issue that is vital to thousands of Pennsylvanians who are facing devastating illnesses — medical cannabis.
The Legislature has been considering some form of a medical cannabis bill since 2009, and every two years, the session ends before anything is done to help suffering patients. Last May, the…
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The Australian Parliament has set the stage for the nation’s states to follow their American counterparts when it comes to medical marijuana, by approving a legalization bill this week that allows for widespread MMJ cultivation, sale and use.
The next step, according to the Inquisitr, is for Australia’s individual states to legalize MMJ. The federal government meanwhile will begin a rulemaking and licensing process through the Therapeutic Goods Administration, which will use a separate…
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(APN) ATLANTA — On Monday, February 22, 2016, the House Judiciary Non-Civil Committee eliminated in-state cultivation of medical cannabis from HB 722.
The revised HB 722 still adds several medical conditions to Georgia’s existing medical cannabis immunity laws; and adds one cannabinoid, Tetrahydrocannabinol Acid (THCA).
HB 722 has been gutted from 24 pages down to only seven.
“I feel like the Walking Dead. I must look like I have been disemboweled,” Rep. Allen Peake (R-Macon) told the committee.
Cannabinoid THCA…
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And these incidents are increasing more dramatically among out-of-state visitors, according to research published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
They found that ER visits related to marijuana by people from out of state almost doubled, from 85 per 100,000 visits in 2013 to 168 per 100,000 visits in 2014, which is the first year recreational marijuana was sold legally.
Researchers recorded 163 marijuana cases per 10,000 visits by people from out-of-state in 2014, up from 78 per 10,000 visits in 2012.
The doctors say there…
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By Ricardo Baca and David Migoya, The Denver Post
For the fifth time in less than a week state cannabis regulators have issued a health advisory and recall of marijuana over concerns it is contaminated with potentially dangerous pesticides not approved for use on the crop.
Thursday’s order by the Marijuana Enforcement Division involves 446 batches of recreational…
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This week a Federal Court judge in Vancouver ruled in favour of medical marijuana users, saying they should be allowed to grow their own pot, and federal laws preventing them from doing so are unconstitutional.
Strangely enough, the judge’s conclusions from the bench on high — so to speak — echo much of what hippies and potheads and rights activists have been saying about pot for half a century or so.
The federal government — i.e., the former Conservative federal government — had declared it was too dangerous to allow medical…
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Inexperienced weed tourists visiting Colorado have been filling the state’s emergency rooms at an alarming rate, according to a study that will be published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The statewide analysis that Kim and colleagues conducted found that, indeed, out-of-state emergency room visits for marijuana-related symptoms more than doubled from 2012 to 2014. Coloradans across the time period mostly complained of gastrointestinal problems, while the most common ailment by visitors was psychiatric, including aggressive…
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By Ben Neary, Associated Press
CHEYENNE — A Wyoming legislative committee on Thursday moved to make possession of marijuana brownies and other foods and beverages containing the drug a misdemeanor.
The Wyoming Senate earlier this week called for making it a felony to possess more than three ounces of food or drink containing marijuana or its active…
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LARAMIE, WY — The use of marijuana alone is most likely not a contributor to psychosis disorder, according to a literature review published in the journal Current Psychiatry Reports.
A pair of researchers from the University of Wyoming and from Columbia University in New York City evaluated recent studies associating the use of cannabis with psychotic behaviors. They reported that cannabis use does not cause the psychosis, but rather, that subjects susceptible to the disorder are more likely to engage in early-onset use of the…
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When word spread around the Capitol that freshly minted lobbyist Amy Jenkins signed on to represent the California Cannabis Industry Association, veteran lobbyists told her the move could ruin her political career.
“I was warned against it,” recalled Jenkins, who moved on as former Sen. Lou Correa’s chief of staff to Platinum Advisors in late 2014. “Now we’re seeing this complete shift in attitude where these very same people are coming to me and saying, ‘Hey, do you have a client you can throw my way or can you give me a…
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Cannabist Staff
Featured guests: Chris Connors, COO of America’s First Brands and Jake Salazar, owner of MMJ America
LOTS TO TALK ABOUT
• We dive into some of the issues with marketing cannabis cigarettes, and why a marijuana aficionado might prefer them to pre-roll joints.
• How can a cannabis brand expand to other legalized states and maintain…
CONTINUE READING: Click Here to Continue Reading Article …
By Sohum Shah, The Cannabist Staff
Lonavala, India — I lit the spliff and took a quick hit as I felt myself melt into the swing. I began to rock myself back and forth as a slight breeze rustled through my hair — a welcome contrast to the sun beaming down on my face. I was sitting in the garden of a bungalow in a Zoroastrian resort nestled in the hills outside of…
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The sky has fallen in Montana.
The state Supreme Court issued a ruling on Thursday in a case that’s been ongoing since 2011 over a law approved by the state legislature that was intended to basically regulate the medical cannabis industry out of existence. Though the court didn’t side completely with lawmakers, it upheld enough of the law to signal a virtual end to dispensaries and cannabis businesses in Montana.
According to the Associated Press, the court ruled that MMJ “providers”…
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The 17-12 vote on the second substitute of SB73, sponsored by Sen. Mark Madsen, R-Saratoga Springs, came despite opposition from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Utah Medical Association and law enforcement groups.
“I really did not expect [the passage]. I really didn’t think we’d get these votes today,” said Christine Stenquist, co-founder and president of the group Together for Responsible Use and Cannabis Education.
Stenquist and other advocates who had threatened to launch an initiative to let voters…
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Grow it and he will buy it.
John Roulac, the founder and CEO of a major hemp foods company, Nutiva, said he plans to buy all the organic hemp that Kentucky can produce, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader.
But labeling hemp as organic has been a controversial issue in recent weeks, as the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that it would grant one Colorado hemp producer with an organic certified label, but then reneged last week, saying the decision was premature.
“The USDA’s new…
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ST. LOUIS, MO — The prevalence of problematic cannabis is decreasing, according to data published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry.
Investigators at the Washington School of Medicine in St. Louis assessed trends in marijuana use and in the prevalence of marijuana use disorders during the years 2002 to 2013. Researchers determined that the self-reported use of cannabis by adults increased an estimated 19 percent, but that reports of cannabis-related problems actually declined during this period.
“We’re certainly seeing some increases in…
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House members will begin working on S. 241, which would end marijuana prohibition in Vermont, after they return from Town Meeting Week
MONTPELIER, VT — The Vermont Senate gave final approval to a bill Thursday (17-12) that would end marijuana prohibition in the state and regulate the cultivation and sale of marijuana for adult use.
Senate Bill 241 received initial Senate approval on Wednesday. It will now advance to the House of Representatives, which will begin working on it after members return from Town Meeting Week.
“We applaud the…
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