Medical marijuana for PTSD legislation heads to Colorado House for debate

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By Alicia Wallace, The Cannabist Staff

Colorado legislation to add PTSD as a qualifying condition for medical marijuana is headed to the full House.

Rep. Jonathan Singer, D-Longmont, who co-sponsored the bill with Sen. Irene Aguilar, D-Denver, said he anticipates “a bumpy but positive outcome” for Senate Bill 17.

In a late-night vote Wednesday that followed seven hours of testimony, the House State, Veterans, and Military Affairs committee passed the measure in an 8-1 decision. Stephen…

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Pediatricians warn against teen pot use amid increasingly lax laws

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By Lindsey Tanner, The Associated Press

CHICAGO — An influential doctors group is beefing up warnings about marijuana’s potential harms for teens amid increasingly lax laws and attitudes on pot use.

Many parents use the drug and think it’s OK for their kids, but “we would rather not mess around with the developing brain,” said Dr. Seth Ammerman.

The advice comes in a new report from the American Academy of Pediatrics, published Monday in Pediatrics. The group opposes medical and…

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Document on marijuana health risks no longer listed DEA website

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A document that put the DEA under fire for disseminating misinformation about marijuana’s health effects has disappeared from the agency’s website.

As of Monday, “The Dangers and Consequences of Marijuana Abuse,” a nearly 45-page publication on the various ramifications of cannabis use, no longer was available on the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s website.

The document last year was at the center of a legal petition by Americans for Safe Access claiming the DEA’s publishing of…

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Summit County has the highest rate of marijuana-related ER visits in Colorado

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By Kailyn Lamb, Summit Daily 

Marijuana use for adults in northwestern Colorado increased by nearly 60 percent from 2014 to 2015 according to a study from the Colorado Department of Health and Environment.

The report, “Monitoring Health Concerns Related to Marijuana in Colorado in 2016,” was released on Jan. 30, and was put together based off surveys. It looked at marijuana use in adults and children, as well as pregnant women. In the northwestern part of Colorado in 2014, 10.3 percent…

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Colorado issues safety guidelines for marijuana businesses

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Cannabis businesses in Colorado now have guidance on how to create and maintain a safe workplace.

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) has issued an 80-page report intended to help marijuana businesses identify health and safety hazards that could exist in their workplaces and “provide a starting point for the assessment and evaluation of occupational health hazards.”


Spring 2017 MJBizConAssembled by the Colorado Marijuana Occupational Health and Safety Work Group, the guide focuses on the safety of jobs ranging from extraction…

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Colorado on marijuana: ER visits, poison-control calls down even as consumption rates remain steady

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Monitoring potential public-health outcomes was a top priority for state health officials after Colorado implemented its recreational marijuana law in 2014.

Three years into regulated sales of recreational cannabis, the Retail Marijuana Public Health Advisory Committee says calls to poison control and marijuana-related emergency room visits are down, even though overall consumption of pot remains steady — signs that existing policy and education efforts may be working.

“I think that…

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Colorado’s future doctors support medical marijuana but not sure about recommending it

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Colorado medical students are in favor of marijuana legalization but less certain about whether they will recommend cannabis to patients once they become doctors, according to the results of a new survey published this week.

Nearly two-thirds of the students surveyed at the University of Colorado School of Medicine said they support marijuana legalization, and almost half said they believe that marijuana can have physical health benefits. But only 29 percent of the students said they would…

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Hemp industry members file legal challenge against DEA’s new marijuana extract rule

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The hemp industry has taken the DEA to court in the wake of a controversial new rule on marijuana extracts.

Denver’s Hoban Law Group, representing the Hemp Industries Association, Centuria Natural Foods and RMH Holdings LLC, on Friday filed a judicial review action against the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, alleging the agency overstepped its bounds when enacting a rule establishing coding for marijuana derivatives such as cannabidiol (CBD) oil. The action, Hoban attorneys…

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Massive marijuana research report details knowledge base with eye on future

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As marijuana legalization becomes entrenched across America, what is known about the plant’s health benefits and adverse effects is rapidly gaining urgency.

In the first comprehensive review by American researchers in decades, their assessment of 10,000 studies since 1999 quantified the weight of research evidence and found cannabis has legitimate medicinal benefits for a variety of ailments, but also has been shown as a contributor to certain mental health issues and, to some degree,…

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No change in Colorado teens’ marijuana use before and after legalization, study finds

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Recreational marijuana legalization had no impact on how many Colorado teens use pot or on whether they think it is dangerous, but that could be because years of medical marijuana sales already had brought about changes in those measures, according to a new study.

The study, posted on the website of the journal JAMA Pediatrics on Tuesday, looked at national survey data and concluded that the percent of teens from Colorado who said they had used marijuana in the past month was…

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Drug-related child welfare cases have increased in Colorado, but connection to legalized marijuana is unclear

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Colorado child-protection cases related to drug use have increased since the state opened recreational marijuana shops three years ago, yet it’s unclear how much the uptick relates to pot.

Child welfare cases involving drug use by a parent or foster parent went up by about 2 percentage points from 2013 to 2015, even as the total number of new child welfare cases declined. That’s an increase from 1,513 drug-related cases to 1,720 statewide. What’s unknown is how many of those…

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U.S. women increasingly use pot during pregnancy, study finds

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CHICAGO (AP) — U.S. women are increasingly using marijuana during pregnancy, sometimes to treat morning sickness, new reports suggest. Though the actual numbers are small, the trend raises concerns because of evidence linking the drug with low birth weights and other problems.

In 2014, almost 4 percent of pregnant women said they’d recently used marijuana, up from 2.4 percent in 2002, according to an analysis of annual drug use surveys.

Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National…

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Aging baby boomers increasingly embrace marijuana, heavy alcohol use

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By Christopher Ingraham, The Washington Post

I wrote last week on how fewer teens are using drugs or alcohol than at any point in the past few decades.

Indeed, while anti-drug PSAs still encourage parents to talk to their teens about drugs before someone else does, two recent studies suggest there’s another high-risk population we should be worried about: our kids’ grandparents.

The first study found that, since 2006, marijuana use has increased significantly among adults age 50 and…

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Colorado researchers receive $2.35M to study marijuana use on driving, other impacts of legalization

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In a groundbreaking effort to better understand what, exactly, happened after voters legalized recreational marijuana in Colorado, the state’s Health Department on Tuesday announced $2.35 million in grants to researchers who will help answer that question.

Most of the money — $1.68 million — will go toward two studies that look at the impacts of marijuana use on driving. The first will compare driving impairment for heavy marijuana consumers versus occasional consumers. The…

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Researchers fret as info lags on pot effects on older adults

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DENVER — Surveys show a small but growing number of older adults are using marijuana — a trend that worries researchers who say not enough information exists about how pot affects older users.

Abundant research has been done on how the drug impacts developing brains, but little is known about the potential consequences on older users — even as recreation pot has been legalized in a number of states.

Researchers at New York University say pot could pose health challenges to older…

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How medical marijuana could help boomers get the most out of retirement

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By Christopher Ingraham, The Washington Post

States that passed medical marijuana laws saw a significant boost to older Americans’ workforce participation, according to a new working paper from researchers at Johns Hopkins and Temple University. States with medical marijuana laws also saw improvements in overall health for older men, although the health effects for older women were more mixed.

Like many recent studies examining the effects of marijuana laws, this one compared what…

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Suspensions re-instated for Colorado doctors who recommended high medical marijuana plant counts

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Four Colorado doctors accused of over-recommending high plant counts for medical marijuana patients have had their suspensions re-instated, after a judge reversed course and tossed out their lawsuit.

The decision means the doctors will go through with administrative hearings in the hopes of having their suspensions lifted. An attorney for the doctors says an appeal of the lawsuit’s dismissal is also likely.

The four doctors — Gentry Dunlop, Robert Maiocco, Deborah Parr and William…

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Influential Vermont Marijuana Study Criticized

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Doctors, social workers and academics are criticizing a Vermont health department marijuana study completed earlier this year which helped persuade the state’s House of Representatives to reject a recreational cannabis bill in May.

Critics of the 84-page report charged it was narrowly focused on the negative aspects of marijuana, the Burlington Free Press reported.

Had lawmakers approved the recreational MJ bill, Vermont would have become the first state in the nation to approve legalization through its legislature.

The Vermont Department…

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Quest to get PTSD on Colorado medical marijuana list continues in court

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Colorado residents seeking the use of medical marijuana to treat the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder are taking their case to the state Court of Appeals.

Last fall, four military veterans and one sexual assault survivor filed a complaint against the Colorado Board of Health, which had ruled against adding PTSD as a qualifying condition under the state’s medical marijuana program.

In May, Denver District Court Judge R. Michael Mullins affirmed the Board of Health’s…

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After Hugo water found THC-free, officials say it was better to be safe

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HUGO — The small town that made a sudden appearance on national headlines for nearly two days is returning to normal after state laboratories confirmed field tests that gave rise to suspicions about THC contaminated water turned out to be false positives — all six of them.

The Colorado Bureau of Investigation provided the more conclusive results indicating the water does not have THC, the main psychoactive compound in marijuana. Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office announced the news…

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Kids’ emergency room visits for marijuana increased in Colorado after legalization, study finds

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Colorado’s laws on labeling and child-resistant packaging have been unable to stop an increase of young kids ending up in the emergency room after accidentally consuming marijuana, according to a new study published online Monday in the medical journal JAMA Pediatrics.

The study — led by a doctor at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus — found that emergency room visits and poison-control calls for kids 9 and younger who consumed pot in Colorado jumped after…

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