AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND
Qld cuts hurdle for medicinal cannabis [The Mercury]
Queensland patients will soon be able to get their hands on medicinal cannabis from a doctor without needing to get state approval. A specialist doctor will be able to directly prescribe medicinal cannabis to a patient from July. A general practitioner will still have to apply to Queensland Health and the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) for approval to prescribe the drug to someone. Once both approvals are in place, the doctor will be able to arrange for an approved pharmacist to dispense the medication.
NSW Greens Push to Legalise Recreational Cannabis [Sydney Criminal Lawyers]
The NSW Greens are set to introduce a private member’s bill within 100 days post-state election that could see recreational cannabis legalised for adult use in NSW during the next parliamentary term, which is a move that an increasingly large percentage of the community would like to see happen.
Pete Evans Could Be The Face Of Legal Cannabis In Oz & Some People Are Worried [Pedestrian]
The wave of attention and controversy that inevitably follows celebrity chef Pete Evans is about to hit the Australian medical cannabis movement, raising questions over what the Hugos founder could do for the community. His presence has put doctors and activists at an impasse unlikely to be resolved.
An Australian perspective on legalising medical cannabis [Health Europa]
Minister for Health Greg Hunt provides an insight into Australia’s experience with legalising medical cannabis, three years on.
Bennett puts Govt’s work ahead of cannabis referendum under the microscope during exchange with Ardern [TV NZ]
In Parliament today National’s Paula Bennett quizzed the Prime Minister on the upcoming cannabis referendum, wanting to know more details about the legislation. The New Zealand public are set to vote in the 2020 election on whether to legalise recreational cannabis or not. “When will the cannabis referendum bill be introduced to the House?” Ms Bennett asked Jacinda Ardern in Question Time today. “The question as to whether or not there would be a bill more broadly, that’s something that will be announced once Cabinet has finalised its decisions,” Ms Ardern answered.
Australian Government Awarding of Major Project Status for Toowoomba Medicinal Cannabis Project [Newsfile]
Canadian company, Asterion’s CEO, Stephen Van Deventer, welcomed the announcement by the Australian Federal Industry, Innovation and Science Minister, Hon Karen Andrews MP, and stated: “Asterion chose Australia to develop the world’s largest medicinal cannabis glasshouse because of the Australian Government’s ambition to become the world’s largest exporter of cannabis products for medicinal purposes, as announced in January 2018.”
Three million Australians suffering from chronic pain [News]
Millions of Australians are quietly suffering through chronic pain, and the treatment options remain terribly flawed. But one alternative does not get nearly as much attention in Australia as it does elsewhere in the world — medicinal cannabis.
Nimbin’s 420 Smoke-In! [Hemp Embassy]
Featuring the BIG Joint from 2pm ~ Music, hemp food and 4:20 Smoke In ~ Mingle Park Nimbin ~ 4:20pm April 20 2019
NORTH AMERICA
Legalization pushed up price of pot by 17% in Canada [CBC]
The legalization of marijuana in Canada has caused the price of the drug overall to increase by about 17 per cent, but people who are buying it legally are paying about 57 per cent more than black market buyers.
Bipartisan Team of Lawmakers Reintroduce Landmark Bill to Protect State-Legal Marijuana Markets [Medical Marijuana Inc]
A bipartisan group of lawmakers in the United States House and Senate reintroduced landmark legislation last week to give states license to legalize marijuana as they best see fit. The Strengthening the Tenth Amendment Through Entrusting States (STATES) Act of 2019 amends the Controlled Substances Act to forbid federal law enforcement agencies from enforcing prohibition.
Even Canadian Banks Are Shunning U.S. Pot Firms [Bloomberg]
The U.S. cannabis industry has been severely restricted in its ability to access banking services because of federal prohibition. Two Canadian bank heads say they too will steer clear of the sector until new laws are passed.
ACLU Demands Arizona Court Stops Prosecutions of Medical Marijuana Patients [High Times]
Prosecutors insist Arizona’s 2010 Medical Marijuana Act does not protect the use of extracts or products containing them.
Colorado lawmakers advance marijuana delivery, social consumption bills [Marijuana Business Daily]
A key Colorado House panel has narrowly approved two bills that would open up business opportunities by allowing cannabis home delivery and on-site consumption.
10,000 People Attend Sold Out NoCo Hemp Expo 2019 In Denver [Ministry of Hemp]
NoCo 6’s expo hall also featured the latest in hemp innovations. All through the event, panel discussions looked to the future of a fast-growing industry, with a focus on building sustainable hemp in America.
BUSINESS & POLICY
Industrial Hemp Is The Answer To Petrochemical Dependency [Forbes]
A shift to natural, biodegradable and recyclable hemp-based products could have significant benefits for the environment and human health. From reducing the nearly 8 million metric tons of plastic that infiltrate our oceans every year to allaying consumer concerns over petrochemicals in beauty and hygiene products to the role that hemp can play in removing toxins from soil, the benefits of a more hemp-driven industrial base are hard to ignore—to say nothing of the $20,000 to $50,000 per acre that hemp farmers can make, according to Bodhi Urban, CEO of leading seed supplier HGH Seed.
Unilever subsidiary Schmidt’s Natural to launch hemp, CBD deodorant products [Bloomberg]
Unilever Plc is dipping its toe into the cannabis space with one of its subsidiaries launching a CBD-infused product Tuesday, signalling a growing acceptance among major consumer goods companies to join the fast-moving marijuana market.
Attorney General Barr: US law protecting state-legal marijuana trumps current situation [Marijuana Business Daily]
U.S. Attorney General William Barr might be warming to the idea of a federal law that protects state-legal cannabis programs, a development that could provide a notable boost to federal marijuana reform.
Cannabis-Infused Food Could Trend In The U.S. This Year [Business Times]
Data from a National Restaurant Association survey discovered that three in four chefs in the U.S. mentioned cannabis-infused options as a highly possible trend in the food sector this year.
Will Medical Cannabis Sales Eventually Surpass Recreational Sales? [Green Entrepreneur]
Many assume the recreational marijuana market will surpass medical cannabis but there are many reasons to suspect they will be proved wrong. Medical marijuana could become the bigger of the two within a few years thanks to three factors.
HEALTH & SCIENCE
How To Choose the Best Synthetic Urine To Pass Your Drug Test [Weed News]
If you have a drug test coming up and need to protect your privacy, there’s really only one fail-proof option. The internet is full of “tips and tricks” for how to fool a drug test but, the reality is that many of these workarounds don’t actually work. Sure, there are products like detox drinks that can help flush out drug toxins from your system, but these beverages aren’t 100% effective – especially if you’re a heavy user. Plus, when most drug tests are treated like pop-quizzes, there’s typically not enough time to go through the detox process that many of these beverages take. The most tried and true method for passing a urine drug test is to use synthetic urine.
The ‘painless woman’ helps us see how anxiety and fear fit in the big picture of pain [The Conversation]
Anandamide, named after the Sanskrit word for “bliss”, is the best studied of the neurotransmitter molecules known as cannabinoids that our bodies make.
Combining opioids and marijuana may be advantageous for pain sufferers [Science Daily]
Researchers report combining cannabinoids with morphine did not significantly increase impulsivity or memory impairment in a study conducted in rhesus monkeys. The findings suggest using opioids and marijuana together could offer a safe way to cut opioid dosage among patients suffering from pain and thereby reduce their risk of becoming addicted to opioids.
Anti-seizure Effects of Cannabinoids May Benefit Some Neurological Disorders But Not Others [Dravet Syndrome News]
Despite the promising anti-seizure effects of cannabinoids in children with Dravet syndrome and Lennox-Gastaut syndrome, more research is needed to understand how these compounds work and their potential benefits for other neurological disorders, according to a study.
Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada Investing $1.5M for Cannabis Research [Ganjapreneur]
The investment will span five years and will cover applications for basic science, clinical, health services, and policy cannabis research.
CULTURE & SOCIETY
Smoke Up and Drive for Science—Volunteers Needed [Leafly]
It’s one of the more contentious issues in the national cannabis legalization debate: What are the effects of marijuana on a person’s driving abilities?
The Best Thing To Do On 4/20 Is To Watch ‘Grass Is Greener’ On Netflix [Weed News]
A new film is coming out on April 20th that is going to be unlike any other cannabis film that has ever been released. I honestly think that it is going to be the greatest cannabis film ever created because it is from a viewpoint and perspective that has never been properly captured before. The film is ‘Grass is Greener‘ and it’s debuting on 4/20 on Netflix. It’s directed by legendary hip hop pioneer Fab 5 Freddy (one of my all-time personal heroes) and looks at cannabis prohibition’s harmful impact on Communities of Color.
The Best 4/20 Events in America 2019 [Leafly]
One in five Americans now lives in a state with legal, adult use cannabis laws. From sea to shining sea, concerts, contests, film festivals, and expos are going off on April 20, which falls on a Saturday this year. What was once high school code for meeting up and getting lifted (“420!”) has transformed over a generation into a rallying cry for cannabis culture and liberation. With 10 legal adult-use states, plus Washington, D.C., the parties are bigger than ever.
In Photos: Feminine Pipes So Gorgeous, You’ll Hesitate to Smoke Them [Leafly]
Glassware has always served as a fundamental part of cannabis culture, from simple one-hitters and bespeckled bowls to elaborate rigs and bongs. Step into any conventional head shop or bodega, however, and the aesthetic has remained largely the same: psychedelic pattern work, cartoonish riffs on pop culture icons, and corny stash devices. But as cannabis moves into the mainstream, a new generation of independent artists are injecting personal aesthetic and style into functional pieces of art worthy of open display.
Ronald Siegel, drug expert who believed people naturally like to get high, dies at 76 [LA Times]
Through the ages and across the planet, humans have chased after mind-altering plants, alcohol and other mind-alerting substances with such persistence that the desire to get high was a basic human drive, right up there with hunger, thirst and sex, Siegel came to believe. “In a sense, the war on drugs is a war against ourselves, a denial of our very nature,” Siegel wrote in “Intoxication — Life in Pursuit of Artificial Paradise,” his book on humankind’s fascination with mood-altering substances.
Cate Faehrmann: Why a lawmaker admitted to taking MDMA [BBC]
Australian Cate Faehrmann may be the world’s first politician to admit to having used the illicit drug MDMA. The reaction in Australia, and globally, has surprised her, she tells Gary Nunn in Sydney.
FUNDRAISERS/CAMPAIGNS/PETITIONS/SURVEYS
Gateway to Good Health [Weed Billboards]
The war on drugs and in particular cannabis is well past its use by date in Australia and in an effort to keep the issue on the agenda we have started a weed billboards campaign. Excited that our first billboard is up just north of Grafton in NSW.
It costs $5K for a year, and we’d like to grow weed billboards all around the country. We’d love your help to spread the weed, so there is a gofundme site where you can donate.
Please send in billboard suggestions! We’d like this campaign to support messages from various cannabis and drug law reform groups around Australia, so it would be great to pool resources to create more and more new billboards. We are open to all creative ideas, and any size donations.
We just want an end to being criminals for using one of nature’s absolute gifts.
E-Petition: Legalise cannabis for recreational use [Parliament of Victoria]
Petition: For a Referendum on Recreational Cannabis Use during 2019 NSW Election [Liberal Democrats]
Cannabis as Medicine Survey: 2018 [The University of Sydney]
Support Tony Bower’s Legal Fees [gofundme]
Just Reform It! Let’s Get Real about Drugs [The Greens]
Survey: What’s the link between cannabis use and psychotic experiences? [The University of Queensland]
EVENTS
Nimbin’s 420 Smoke-In! [Hemp Embassy]
Featuring the BIG Joint from 2pm ~ Music, hemp food and 4:20 Smoke In ~ Mingle Park Nimbin ~ 4:20pm April 20 2019
Harvest Festival & Cannabis Cup [New Zealand]
20-21 April 2019, Dunedin NZ
27th Nimbin MardiGrass [Hemp Embassy]
3-5 May 2019, Nimbin NSW
Garden States – A forum for cultivating ethnobotanical plants & knowledge [Entheogenesis Australis]
12 May 2019, Melbourne VIC
Hemp, Health & Innovation Expo & Symposium [HHI]
18-19 May 2019, Rosehill Racecourse, Rosehill, Sydney NSW
EDUCATION
‘Sex, Drugs and the Electoral Roll’: MP’s Memoir Goes On Sale [Reason]
Medicinal Cannabis & Hemp Tasmania & “the leaf” Newsletter [Facebook]
Nimbin Medican Workshops on YouTube [Hemp Embassy]
MardiGrass Hemposium 2018 Talks now Available on YouTube [Hemp Embassy]
DRUG WAR OVER! [Radio Documentary]
View five new EGA video presentations on ethnobotanical plants and psychedelics [Entheogenesis Australis]
To mark the anniversary of our special gathering and end the year on a high note, we’ve released five new videos of talks from the Psychedelic Symposium that are now available to watch online and can also be found below in this email.