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Health Warnings On Drugs Shouldn’t Be Provided By Police [Huffington Post]

We have seen police in Australia and in the UK send out warnings about dangerous batches of drugs on the streets. Does it strike you as odd that these health warnings are provided by police? The reason this occurs in Australia is because there is no early warning system on drugs in place. An early warning system is one where information on drugs is shared in real time between health workers and officials and then to the public. It doesn’t exist here because, in part, that would involve pill testing and providing information to people using those drugs. And we are told this sends the wrong message and therefore can’t be considered. Better to fail our kids than compromise our views. And better to let police talk to media and then hope the people using these drugs are watching the mainstream news services. The best option is to inform health networks that include peer networks and websites used by actual users of drugs so they find out quickly what risks exist. The upshot of what we get now are scared parents and minimal impact on the drug market.  In contrast, we know that well informed markets result in better and safer products and keeping consumers informed is quite simply one of the best ways we have to make the drugs safer.

Growing use of drugs pose threat to resources sector: report [Australian Mining]

The increased use of drugs in Australia has posed increased challenges for employers in the mining and oil and gas sectors, according to a recent survey. The AMMA 2016 Drug and Alcohol Testing Survey gathered quantitative and qualitative responses from 53 Australian resources employers, finding only 40 per cent of respondents test for synthetic cannabis. This is amid concerns over the ability of testing to keep up with rapidly changing substances.

Medical marijuana company Creso Pharma surges on market debut [The Australian]

Medical marijuana company Creso Pharma has jumped as much as 40 per cent on debut after raising $5 million through an initial public offering. The company is looking to tap into a growing market that could soon expand to Australia, with Creso developing products for both humans and pets. Creso chairman and co-founder Boaz Wachtel is a familiar name in the space, having been a co-founder of the first medical marijuana company to list on the local exchange — MMJ Phytotech. Since then others have joined the local bourse, including Medlab Clinical and MGC Pharmaceuticals. The Creso IPO was first reported in The Australian in July, with the company noting it was looking to differentiate itself from the increasingly crowded medical marijuana field by incorporating pharmaceutical expertise into its products pipeline. “Our core difference is the level of methodological rigour we will bring to the sector that will complement traditional plant-derived cannabis treatments already on the market,” chief executive Miri Halperin Wernli, who has previously worked with pharma giants Merck and Roche, said.

Medicinal cannabis costs set to tumble after cheaper product gets green light [NZ Herald]

The cost of medicinal cannabis is set to tumble after Associate Health Minister Peter Dunne approved a Canadian pain relief product. It is estimated the marijuana-based tincture called Tilray will cost at least 50 per cent less than the existing legal product Sativex, a UK mouth spray made by GW Pharma. Multiple sclerosis sufferer, Dr Huhana Hickey, who applied to use Tilray, said: “I’m so relieved. It’s going to save me $700 a month.” The AUT academic says she has spent $9000 on prescriptions since she started taking medicinal cannabis in February. Hickey says the results have been remarkable. “I’m living my life again. I’m back to work, I am fully-functioning” She started using the spray to replace pain killers such as morphine, codeine, tramadol and other opiates which she had been prescribed for years.

W.H.O. Cannabis Report [Drug Science]

The scheduling under the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs assumes a scientific justification. However, cannabis and cannabis resin have never been evaluated by the World Health Organisation (WHO) since it was mandated the review of psychoactive substances in 1948. The last evaluation for the international substance control conventions were therefore when the League of Nations evaluated them in 1924 and 1935. In 80 years since that decision, both the social context of cannabis use and the science of drug dependence have dramatically changed. Yet, because there has never been a formal review, both herbal cannabis and cannabis resin continue to remain under the strictest drug control regime possible. As a result, in the absence of a recent scientific assessment, the continued prohibition of cannabis is completely illegitimate even though it may be legal.

What do we know about marijuana’s medical benefits? Two experts explain the evidence [The Conversation]

Currently 25 states and the District of Columbia have medical cannabis programs. On Nov. 8, Arkansas, Florida and North Dakota will vote on medical cannabis ballot initiatives, while Montana will vote on repealing limitations in its existing law. We have no political position on cannabis legalization. We study the cannabis plant, also known as marijuana, and its related chemical compounds. Despite claims that cannabis or its extracts relieve all sorts of maladies, the research has been sparse and the results mixed. At the moment, we just don’t know enough about cannabis or its elements to judge how effective it is as a medicine. What does the available research suggest about medical cannabis, and why do we know so little about it?

Here’s what America would be like with legal pot [The Washington Post]

Carl Sagan was famous for intoning about “billions and billions” when describing how many stars, galaxies and planets existed in the cosmos. That mantra should be chanted by anyone trying to understand marijuana use and policy in the United States. In the aggregate, Americans report smoking pot about 4 billion days a year (totaling up all the days each individual reported pot use for that year). But under the assumptions that some people understate their marijuana use on government surveys and that some users smoke more than once a day, the true annual total of use episodes could easily exceed 10 billion. These almost inconceivably large numbers lead us to three important realities about pot use.
Reality No. 1: The risks of being arrested for smoking pot are extremely low.
Reality No. 2: Marijuana use almost never contributes to suicide or homicide.
Reality No. 3: A key impact of pot legalization will be an increase in how much time Americans spend stoned.

Support for marijuana legalization continues to rise [Pew Research Centre]

The share of Americans who favor legalizing the use of marijuana continues to increase. Today, 57% of U.S. adults say the use of marijuana should be made legal, while 37% say it should be illegal. A decade ago, opinion on legalizing marijuana was nearly the reverse – just 32% favored legalization, while 60% were opposed.

Massachusetts Marijuana Vote Could Mean Legalization Across New England [Hartford Courant]

Massachusetts is one of five states where measures to legalize and regulate the sale of recreational marijuana will be on the ballot. Voters in Arizona, California, Maine and Nevada will also vote on the issue. An affirmative vote in Maine or Massachusetts would bring legal recreational marijuana to the region for the first time, putting new pressure on those in the state that oppose expanded marijuana use. Jill Spineti, president and CEO of the Governor’s Prevention Partnership, said her group wasn’t yet willing to shift the dialogue from opposing recreational marijuana use to figuring out the best way to regulate it. At the same time she acknowledged how legal cannabis across the border would complicate that fight.

Marijuana Lights Up State Ballots [The New York Times]

People in nine states, including California, Florida and Massachusetts, will vote Nov. 8 on ballot proposals permitting recreational or medical use of marijuana. These initiatives could give a big push to legalization, prompting the next president and Congress to overhaul the country’s failed drug laws. This is a big moment for what was a fringe movement a few years ago. A Gallup poll released on Wednesday showed 60 percent of Americans support legalizing marijuana, up from 31 percent in 2000 and 12 percent in 1969. The drive to end prohibition comes after decades in which marijuana laws led to millions of people being arrested and tens of thousands sent to prison, a vast majority of whom never committed any violent crimes. These policies have had a particularly devastating effect on minority communities. Federal and state governments have spent untold billions of dollars on enforcement, money that could have been much better spent on mental health and substance abuse treatment.

New documents reveal why the FDA says marijuana isn’t medicine [Vice]

Removing marijuana from Schedule I would require an act of Congress; federal regulators have repeatedly stymied efforts to downgrade weed to a less restrictive classification — and now we know why. VICE News obtained 118 pages of documents (viewable in full below) that show why the feds  believe marijuana is not medicine, despite the fact that 25 states and Washington, D.C., now have medical marijuana laws on the books.

No uptick in marijuana use by adolescents after states pass medical marijuana laws [Medical Xpress]

Adults over the age of 25 increased their use of marijuana after their home states made changes to medical marijuana laws, according to new research by scientists at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. However, there was no difference in the prevalence of marijuana use reported for 12 to 17 or 18 to 25 year-olds after the laws passed. The findings are published online in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence.

‘Commercialization won out’: will legal marijuana be the next big tobacco? [The Guardian]

Opinion polls suggest support for legalization has held up in Colorado where combined sales of recreational and medical cannabis are up by more than 40%, to nearly $1bn over the past two years. That has forced opponents to focus on a different target: the corporate interests making millions from cannabis. Anti-marijuana groups are painting them as little better than cigarette companies in their pursuit of profit over health, in the hope that will play better with liberal voters.

Medical marijuana users ask Liberals to cut costs, update status [The Globe and Mail]

Medical cannabis patients are urging the federal government to make marijuana more affordable by encouraging insurers to cover it and dropping the sales tax once it is legalized. Earlier this week, 15 patients from across Canada spoke with four members of the government’s legalization task force. They told the panel that the cost of medical marijuana often causes financial hardship, according to event facilitator Hilary Black, founder of Vancouver’s oldest dispensary and current director of patient services at the licensed commercial grower Bedrocan. The event was sponsored by the Arthritis Society, Canadians for Fair Access to Medical Marijuana and the Canadian AIDS Society, and attended by patients from different backgrounds, including a police officer, a veteran, and a woman whose epileptic son uses cannabis, said Ms. Black.

Whistler Medical Marijuana Corp. Begins Shipping Live Cannabis Plants [Cannabis Life Network]

Licensed medical cannabis producer Whistler Medical Marijuana Corp. announced earlier today that they have become the first government sanctioned cultivator allowed to sell and ship live cannabis to patients. Earlier this year, Health Canada announced that their new Access to Cannabis for Medical Purposes Regulations would permit medical cannabis patients to grow their own medicine and established new rules for licensed producers that allowed them to sell seeds and plants in addition to dried cannabis and oils.

The Misplaced Demonisation of People who Deal Drugs [Talking Drugs]

Framing people who deal drugs as predatory individuals who care not for their clients’ wellbeing rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of how the drug trade works and risks pushing aggressive law enforcement efforts further onto low-level actors in the trade. The idea that people who deal drugs are unscrupulous, even evil people has consistently been pushed by policymakers and the media, feeding into government aims to ultimately deter people from using drugs. People who deal will do anything to maximise their profits, we are told, including cutting substances with harmful adulterants such as brick dust, glass and rat poison. The above messaging is sadly not always confined to those who wish to maintain the status quo of a punitive approach to drug use. In certain drug policy reform efforts, there is a tendency to implicitly demonise people who deal in order to advocate the protection and wellbeing of people who use drugs. The evidence suggests, however, that contrary to the narrative of the “dangerous drug dealer,” people who engage in this activity, believe it or not, care about the health of their customers. In fact, those who deal – particularly at the street level – face strong incentives to keep their buyers not only alive, but reasonably satisfied with their product. To do otherwise would cause a swift erosion of their customer base.

MHRA Confirms Meeting With CBD Industry Representatives [Cannabis Law Reform]

Today, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), has arranged a meeting with representatives from the UK Cannabis Trade Association (UKCTA) to discuss its designation of cannabidiol (CBD) as a medicine. A request for a meeting was was first made in writing on 20th September 2016, when the possibility of the MHRA’s action was still little more than a rumour.  Nearly six weeks later, after repeated requests, complaints and lobbying from many companies, individuals and MPs, the meeting has been fixed for 3rd November 2016. The main aim of the meeting will be to discuss interim arrangements for people currently using CBD as a food supplement. Clearly, we will also address concerns over the impact of this decision on many small businesses and the people they employ.

Green Party call for decriminalising drug use and legalising medical use of cannabis [Green Party Ireland]

The Green Party have called for the decriminalisation of drug use and the legalisation of cannabis for medical use among their recommendations to the Government’s new National Drugs Strategy. The public consultation on the new strategy closed yesterday.

Richard Branson’s advice for marijuana entrepreneurs: ‘Screw it, just do it’ [Business Insider]

Richard Branson is one of the most exuberant and successful entrepreneurs of our time. Now, the UK’s eighth richest person is throwing his support behind the marijuana industry. Branson gave the keynote address at the New West Summit in San Francisco over the weekend, where thousands of medicinal marijuana patients, investors, and “potrepreneurs” converged to debate the future of weed. The 66-year-old Virgin Group founder, who called in via Skype, did not mince words. When asked what advice he would give to the industry’s pioneers who are leading the fight for legalization, Branson said, “My main motto in life is, ‘screw it, just do it.'”

SNP Vote in Favour of Medical Cannabis in Scotland [volteface]

Delegates at the SNP Party Conference last week voted overwhelmingly in favour of legalising medical cannabis. They also expressed a desire to have this power devolved to the Scottish Parliament. The motion was put forward by Laura Brennan-Whitefield, who suffers from Multiple Sclerosis and argued that having access to cannabis would help ease her pain. Brennan-Whitefield urged her fellow members to “be the party of compassion and common sense”. The main voice of opposition to the motion came from SNP councillor Audrey Doig, who was booed by the delegates for saying “I know that the MS card is being played here, but it’s not just MS that it be would be used for” and for suggesting that those with the chronic disease should try a “fitness regime” instead.

Turkey legalises controlled cannabis production in 19 provinces [Independent]

Turkey has legalised cannabis production in 19 provinces in order to crack down on illegal production, according to new regulations by The Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock.  Published in the Official Gazette in late September, “Hemp Cultivation and Control of Regulations” will allow highly-controlled and ministry-sanctioned cannabis production in the selected provinces for medical and scientific purposes.  Under the regulations, growers must obtain permission from the government allowing them to grow the plant for a three-year-period, Turkish newspaper The Hurriyet reports.  Potential growers must produce a warrant proving they have not been involved in any illegal cannabis production activity or narcotic production or use in the past.

Italy’s New Medical Cannabis Bill Aims to Address Old Obstacles [Leafly]

A group of deputies from Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s Democratic Party have unveiled a new draft bill on medical cannabis. The measure will compete against a broader, adult-use legalization bill that Democratic Party leadership opposes. Medical cannabis has been legal in Italy since 2007, but only 12 regions have so far adopted local provisions. The new Democratic Party bill would regulate production, prescriptions, and distribution at the national level to ensure more uniform operation. The measure would also create a file maintained by the Italian control body for pharmaceutical products to compile data on the genetics of medical cannabis, cultivation areas, and medical cannabis product imports and exports.

Does weed help you sleep? Probably not [Science Daily]

Marijuana users may believe that frequent use helps them sleep, but that perception has been challenged by a new study. It found that daily marijuana users actually scored higher on the Insomnia Severity Index and on sleep-disturbance measures than those who did not use it daily.

Marijuana Australiana [Bryon Bay International Film Festival]

Marijuana Australiana screens on FRIDAY, October 21 at 7.30PM at the Byron Community Centre. Celebrating Nimbin and the gleefully defiant MardiGrass, and beyond, into the bush, where connoisseur horticulturalists lovingly raise their crops. Among footage of the dancing Ganja Faeries, bong-throwing contests and advocates on both sides come the quiet testimonies from the parents of terribly sick children whose lives have been improved. Director Richard Baron will be in attendance.

Free Cannabis Queensland 420 Picnic Brisbane, Oct 30^th [Hemployment Australia]

Free Cannabis Queensland are hosting another 420 Picnic on Sunday, October 30th, from 12:30 – 5:00pm. The picnic will be a friendly gathering to provide a fun and safe event where anyone in the community can come together to show support for, or learn more about, ending the Cannabis prohibition in Australia. There will be music, comedians, games, informative talks, and great networking opportunities for anyone in the industry. We would love to have representations of all factions of our industry, from eco-friendly retailers, to Medicinal Cannabis patients, and artists, connoisseurs, media, or just plain enthusiasts for the cause. If you would like to contribute in any way to the event please just reply to this email, or contact FCQ at their events page on Facebook. If you don’t have the time to put anything together, no worries, if you’re in the area come down and say hello on the day – we’ll have a big sign and a marquee and we’d love to meet you!

Last chance to ‘Support the Conversation Around Psychedelics’ and claim some wonderful perks! [Entheogenesis Australis]

We’re currently counting down the final few days of the Entheogenesis Australis (EGA) crowdfunding campaign – ‘Support the Conversation Around Psychedelics’. The EGA team have all been working very hard and are now very close to the goal but not yet over the line. If you’ve been thinking about donating or intending to pick up one of the diverse perks generously provided by the EGA creative community – now is the time to act! There has been a number of new perks added throughout the campaign, including some just this week, so it’s worth visiting the campaign page and making sure you don’t miss out. We hope that the funds raised will provide a much needed kick start to assist us with our main objective of producing a world class psychedelics symposium in Australia in 2017. Any donations – big or small – will help immensely in this final stage. You can also assist by simply sharing the campaign link (www.chuffed.org/project/psychedelics) or this facebook post: www.facebook.com/EGA.plant.org/posts/650207611816864

Queensland GPs will soon be able to prescribe medicinal cannabis for patients under new laws passed by State Parliament on Wednesday night. The State Government said the Public Health (Medicinal Cannabis) Bill 2016 provided a legitimate pathway for Queensland patients of any age and with a range of conditions to access legal medicinal cannabis products. The laws give certain specialists such as oncologists, paediatric neurologists and palliative care specialists the right to prescribe medicinal cannabis from March next year. Other doctors, including GPs, would be able to apply to Queensland Health for permission to prescribe the drug for patients with certain conditions. The bill was passed unanimously with Opposition and crossbench support.

Tasmanian Police Minister to consider medicinal cannabis register for patients [ABC]

Momentum growing for legalising medicinal cannabis, advocate says
[NZ Herald]

What The Philippines’ War On Drugs Can Teach Australia
[Huffington Post]

Marijuana Arrests Outnumber Those for Violent Crimes, Study Finds
[The New York Times]

INCARCERATING US [Law Enforcement Against Prohibition]

Iowa Medical Marijuana Advocates Urge Voters To Press Politicians For Law Reform [Toke Signals]

How Ancient West African Cannabis Culture Inspires Blacks In US Marijuana Business [AFK Insider]

The DEA is withdrawing a proposal to ban another plant after the Internet got really mad [The Washington Post]

Marijuana prison venture is Damian Marley’s vision for economic growth [The Guardian]

Pets on Pot: The Newest Customer Base for Medical Marijuana
[The New York Times]

What It Looks Like to Grow Indoor Weed [Motherboard]

Florida voters set to legalize medical marijuana: survey [MedicalXpress]

Cannabis-based products are medicine, says regulator [BBC]

The UK Government Is In A Tangle Over Selling Cannabis As A Medicine [BuzzFeed]

The Child Victims of the CBD Ban [volteface]

Nicola Sturgeon faces calls to back cannabis for medicinal use
[Herald Scotland]

A Decade of Failure in the War on Drugs [The New York Times]

What happens when you smoke weed every day for 5 years [indy100]

The Man Who Invented the Drug Memoir [The New Yorker]

Where is medicinal cannabis legal in Australia? [ABC]

Will meth-checks become the new norm for prudent home buyers?
[Domain]

Next Nimbin Medican Workshop October 22 [Nimbin Hemp Embassy]

Nimbin’s next medical cannabis workshop will be held on Saturday October 22 in the villages Town Hall, starting at 11 am. “The more our Premiers talk about medical cannabis the more our phone rings,” says Nimbin HEMP Embassy president Michael Balderstone. “These workshops have proven to be very popular for sharing knowledge and experience and we’ll continue doing them every few months. This time local solicitor Steve Bolt will open the workshop with some legal advice for all those who think the laws have changed. They haven’t, or not yet anyway. His talk will be followed by various healers, including Dr Andrew Katelaris, Tony Bower from Mullaways Medical Cannabis, Chris Harris, Paul Lawrence, Heather Gladman and Frances Hood, Ellen Jones, Radic Al and Andrew Kavasilas, secretary of the Australian HEMP Party.”

“It’s encouraging that the Federal Government is forging ahead with plans to licence the production of medical cannabis but some people can’t wait. And if you have an epileptic child or inoperable cancer, who wants to wait? Meanwhile, news of the plants fantastic healing abilities in certain cases where other drugs have failed are filling the internet and not everyone can afford to fly to Colorado. The more information we can give interested people the better,” he says. “The HEMP Embassy in Nimbin is open every day and never been busier.”

Marijuana Australiana [Bryon Bay International Film Festival]

Marijuana Australiana screens on  FRIDAY, October  21 at  7.30PM at the Byron Community Centre. Celebrating  Nimbin and the gleefully defiant MardiGrass, and beyond,  into the bush, where connoisseur horticulturalists lovingly raise their crops. Among footage of the dancing Ganja Faeries, bong-throwing contests and advocates on both sides come the quiet testimonies from the parents of terribly sick children whose lives have been improved. Director Richard Baron will be in attendance.

Queensland medicinal marijuana one step closer as committee report tabled [The Age]

Criminal history checks on doctors and patients should not be used to assess applications to access medical marijuana in Queensland, a parliamentary committee has argued. The Health, Communities, Disability Services and Domestic and Family Violence Committee has delivered its report on a bill which would create a formal process for Queensland doctors to prescribe medicinal cannabis. The Public Health (Medicinal Cannabis) Bill 2016 proposed allowing the chief executive of Queensland Health to request a criminal history report on medical practitioners – and their patients – as part of the decision on whether they were a suitable person to prescribe or receive the drug. Several groups opposed the measure, arguing criminal history was not relevant in a clinical determination of a patient’s medical treatment, and could discriminate against patients with old or minor convictions. The Queensland Network of Alcohol and other Drug Agencies pointed out that medical practitioners already needed criminal history checks as part of their registration process. The committee said Queensland Health had not provided sufficient justification for the use of criminal history checks, and recommended references to criminal history be removed from the bill.

Questions and answers: Medicinal cannabis [Australian Govt Office of Drug Control]

The following is a summary of questions and responses put at the July 2016 Consultation and Information Sessions about the medicinal cannabis scheme, grouped loosely by theme. These information sharing and consultation sessions and three state and territory working groups cover acquiring seeds, cultivation, licences and permits, manufacture, compliance, patient access, cost-recovery, import and export, and law enforcement issues.

Hundreds of Australian soldiers busted for taking cocaine, cannabis, ecstasy and ice [News]

Hundreds of Australian soldiers have returned positive drug test results in the past four years with the vast majority given the boot, Defence documents reveal. Ecstasy remains the drug most commonly detected, with it found in some form in 96 tests. That was followed by cannabis (80 positive readings), amphetamines (65), steroids (64) and methamphetamines (57). Just four were busted for use of opiates, with 22 each for use of cocaines and benzodiazepines. Under Defence’s tough on drugs policy only one soldier escaped any penalty. Thirteen remain in the army on up to three years formal warning and seven cases from this year remain to be determined. The rest were discharged from the army.

ACT politicians urged to address drug, alcohol problems and divert youth away from justice system [The Age]

Among the top priorities were: expanding the simple cannabis offence notice (SCON) fine system to all other drugs; deeper efforts to divert young people arrested for minor drug offences away from the criminal justice system and providing more withdrawal treatment services for those dependant on drugs to safely stop using.

U.S. drug czar: The feds have dragged their feet on pot research [The Cannabist]

The U.S. government hasn’t really done what it could to further medical marijuana research, the nation’s drug czar says. Michael Botticelli, the director of national drug control policy for the Obama administration, recently joined Politico’s “Pulse Check” podcast to share his thoughts on the “war on drugs,” addiction and how the government’s relationship with marijuana has evolved. “I do think it’s a somewhat fair criticism that the government hasn’t fully supported research to really investigate what’s the potential therapeutic value,” Botticelli says. “And I think the administration, the (U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration) and others have done a number of things to continue to promote good scientific research and diminish some of the barriers that we’ve heard from the research community.”

Your doctor is probably more worried about your weight than your marijuana use, study finds [The Washington Post]

Doctors in the United States are not terribly concerned about your marijuana use, according to a study published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Researchers presented a representative sample of 233 primary-care physicians with nine hypothetical patient behaviors — tobacco use, alcohol use, obesity, etc. — and asked them how much of a problem they thought these behaviors were on a 10-point scale. Their goal was to suss out differences in doctors’ attitudes and treatment behaviors based on their political affiliation. Among the nine behaviors, doctors rated marijuana use as the least-worrisome behavior. The doctors rated alcohol use, tobacco use and obesity as significantly more pressing issues, health-wise, than marijuana use.

Assembly OKs Anchorage’s first marijuana retail store [Alaska Dispatch News]

The Anchorage Assembly unanimously approved the city’s first license for a retail pot shop Tuesday night, setting the stage for Anchorage residents to buy legal marijuana in just a few weeks’ time. After an extremely brief hearing, the Assembly approved a marijuana license and special land use permit for Arctic Herbery, which is located in an industrial area south of Midtown. There was no discussion among Assembly members and no one showed up to testify before the vote. The owner of Arctic Herbery, Bryant Thorp, had already attended several Assembly committee meetings to work out the details of his proposal. In July, Thorp received a cultivation license from the city for a grow operation at the same location. “I’m shocked. That was easy,” Thorp, an Anchorage real estate agent and former post office manager, said in an interview after Tuesday’s meeting. The Assembly approval gives Thorp the go-ahead to open a shop near West 71st Avenue on Arctic Boulevard. Some conditions are attached to the license, such as requiring the store to be closed between midnight and 8 a.m, and be well-ventilated enough that the smell of marijuana can’t be detected at the property line. Thorp also submitted to the Assembly an agreement with the Taku-Campbell Community Council that lays out a framework for communicating with neighbors about problems.

How medical marijuana could help boomers get the most out of retirement [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 happened in medical marijuana states before and after the passage of medical pot provisions, and compared them to trajectories in similar states that did not implement medical marijuana. The data come from the Health and Retirement study, a long-running survey of the health and economic well-being of older American adults. The study found that, among individuals age 50 and older, “passage of [a medical marijuana law] leads to a 9.4 percent increase in the probability of employment and a 4.6 percent to 4.9 percent increase in hours worked per week.”

US pro-marijuana campaigners launch TV ads ahead of November votes [Raw Story]

Campaigns to legalize recreational marijuana use in Massachusetts and Maine launched their first television ads on Monday, hoping to boost public awareness and support ahead of November votes on the issue. The ads began just over a month before Election Day, when voters in five U.S. states will determine whether to legalize the recreational use of the drug, following the lead of Colorado, Washington, Oregon and Alaska, as well as the District of Columbia. The Massachusetts ads feature Tom Nolan, a former Boston Police Department officer and current professor of criminal justice at Merrimack College, advocating for legalization as a way to better regulate marijuana use.

Find out what’s at stake this November [Drug Policy Alliance]

American citizens across the board would benefit from sensible drug policy reform this year – including your friends and family. Let them know what’s at stake.

Marijuana Arrests Hit A Two-Decade Low But Are Still An Outrage [Forbes]

FBI statistics released this week show that the number of marijuana arrests in the United States, after rising slightly in 2014, fell by 8%t last year, reaching the lowest level in two decades. The total was nevertheless more than twice the number in 1991, before a nationwide cannabis crackdown that peaked in 2007. The number of marijuana arrests has fallen more or less steadily since then, reflecting a growing consensus that cannabis consumers should not be treated as criminals.

Marijuana legalization is leading in every state where it’s on the ballot this November [The Washington Post]

Marijuana advocates are heading into the final weeks of the 2016 campaign with the wind at their backs as the latest polling shows legalization measures currently favored by voters in all five states where they’re on the ballot. This is something of a reversal from just a month ago, when the most recent polling had shown voters wary of legalization measures in Massachusetts and Arizona. But the margins of support aren’t huge in any state, meaning that the contests could still swing either way. Polling ballot issues is a tricky business, all the more so with marijuana-related issues, where responses can be heavily influenced by particular question wording. So in the same state, different polls with different question wording can yield radically different results even if fielded at similar times.

Could a marijuana tax help Portland’s minority-owned businesses? [The Guardian]

The legal marijuana trade is booming in Oregon. The government has collected more than $25m in sales taxes so far in 2016, according to the state’s Department of Revenue. With a 25% tax on the stuff, that translates to more than $100m-worth of weed sold so far. But a range of cultural, educational and legal barriers may have kept minorities from cashing in. Support for minorities who want to enter the budding trade could come in the form of a new 3% sales tax on recreational weed in Portland, a ballot measure that will be voted on in November. Oregon will tax marijuana at 17% starting in January, and the additional 3% tax aims, in part, to help people of color in launching their own innovative small businesses. The Portland lawmakers behind the bill project that the additional tax could bring in at least $3m per year, part of which would go toward assisting neighborhood minority-owned businesses of any type, in the form of incubator programs, management and job training and financial support. The accrued tax revenue would also be funneled into drug and alcohol education and treatment programs, public safety investments and supporting women-owned businesses. Finally, a portion would go toward a grant program for people who want to expunge past marijuana-related charges from their criminal records but who can’t afford the hefty legal fees involved.

High times: why TV is getting blazed on cannabis comedies [The Guardian]

Television loves a good zeitgeist to latch onto – but, as trends go, marijuana is hardly new, with the first recorded use of it dating way back into the BC era. So why are small screen execs suddenly obsessed with it? Breakout hit High Maintenance has just been commissioned for a second season on HBO, while at least four other major shows are in development. The legalisation of the drug in Alaska, Colorado, Washington and Oregon is clearly having an influence, but is that all it is? Or have attitudes to cannabis on TV been changing for longer than that?

Some California marijuana growers are against legalization over fears of ‘economic injustice’ [Business Insider UK]

The larger Prop. 64 debate has focused on moral, social and health consequences of legalized pot use, but growers’ concerns are more prosaic. Some fear going legit will mean too much red tape and burdensome oversight. Some fear an onslaught of big business – and competition that could wipe them out.  “I don’t want to replace a criminal injustice with an economic injustice,” Allen said.  Steve Dodge, the CEO of the Humboldt Growers Collective, another trade group, said he is voting against the initiative because it would allow regulatory inspections that some pot growers view as tantamount to warrantless searches.

The Way We Talk About Drug ‘Abuse’ Is Harmful — And It Needs To Change [The Huffington Post]

Substance use disorder isn’t a moral failing. Our language should reflect that. Substance use disorder is a medical circumstance ― a brain disease that can be targeted and treated. But when we use words like “junkie” and “crackhead,” we frame the issue in moral terms, suggesting that people with substance use disorders simply lack the willpower to get better. And that’s not helpful for anyone. That’s the contention of Michael Botticelli, the director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, which is working to change the way Americans talk about addiction. The problem with much of the existing language in this area is that it carries judgmental connotations. That can increase the stigma associated with substance use disorders, and end up driving people away from the treatment they need. You don’t want to seek help from someone you feel is looking down on you.

Canadian college to launch marijuana cultivation course next year [The Guardian]

A college in the Canadian province of New Brunswick plans to institute a program on marijuana cultivation so that students can be trained to work at local companies that produce the drug. The French-language College Communautaire du Nouveau-Brunswick will launch the course next year, said Michel Doucet, executive director of continuing education and customized learning.  In August, the government of New Brunswick, where the college has five campuses, said it invested C$4m ($3.03m) in a medical marijuana company that will create up to 208 jobs in the region. “This is not a mainstream program,” he said. “We’re looking at training qualified employees to meet the needs of industry, versus training students at large.”

Canada faces choice on international drug treaties over legalized pot [CBC News]

As Canada moves forward with its plan to legalize marijuana, government officials have at least one international conundrum to sort out: what to do about the global treaties Canada has signed that prohibit making pot legal? A senior government official said there are essentially two options available. On the one hand, Canada could take a “principled stand” in favour of the international legalization of pot. The other, quieter approach, would be to withdraw from the treaties and attempt to re-enter with a special exemption for legalized marijuana. It’s the second option, causing the “least international turbulence,” that the federal government favours, said the source. But at least one Canadian researcher believes that would be a missed opportunity for Canada. Steven Hoffman, a professor at the University of Ottawa, is co-author of a paper that identified two treaties Canada’s new pot policy is expected to violate:

• 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs.
• 1988 Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances

Hoffman said there is precedent for the quieter option.

In Bolivia, there is a traditional practice of chewing coca leaf, the raw ingredient for cocaine, which the 1961 convention considers a narcotic. In 2012, Bolivia withdrew from the UN treaty. The next year, other member states allowed Bolivia to re-accede with a reservation for chewing coca.

Fast Developing News On CBD And Medicinal Cannabis [Cannabis Law Reform UK]

We learned today that the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has started issuing letters to CBD suppliers advising them that CBD is being designated as a medicine and that sale of CBD products must stop within 28 days. This will be alarming news to many people.  However, it is a complex situation which has some positive aspects to it.  In the short term, if you are already using CBD products, you would be well advised to stock up as much as you can afford. CLEAR has been aware of this possibility for several weeks and consequently we have been working with leading CBD suppliers and licensed producers of both low and high THC cannabis on establishing the UK Cannabis Trade Association (UKCTA).  We are already in correspondence with the MHRA seeking to represent all stakeholders, to establish a consultation process on regulating CBD products and to protect the interests of producers, suppliers and consumers. What these MHRA letters mean is that for CBD to be sold in future, suppliers will have to obtain either a ‘marketing authorisation’ or a ‘traditional herbal registration’ from the MHRA. A marketing authorisation can be fantastically expensive, requiring an initial application fee of £103,000 and full scale clinical trials demonstrating safety and efficacy.

The Future Of UK Medical Marijuana Remains Blurry But There Are Lessons To Take Away From Canada [Points Blog]

In a recently co-edited series on Canadian cannabis called Waiting to Inhale, it became clear that medical marijuana was a supremely complex policy issue. Some of the questions included, but were not limited to, the tenuous balance between consumers and regulators, Canadian physicians as unwanted gatekeepers, marijuana as a measure (and potential leveller) of inequities, and the major struggles between Big Cannabis and craft cannabis. Looking ahead, the UK can learn lessons from other countries, including Canada.

Where is cannabis most popular in UK? [Russell Webster]

Using the same source material, the Independent has now created another map which shows the popularity of cannabis on a region-by-region basis. The figures in the map below — which refer to the percentage of people in that area who told CSEW that they had smoked cannabis in the previous year — show that 8.2 per cent of people in the South West used cannabis,  with Londoners (7.2%) and people in the North West (7.1%) also more likely to smoke weed than other areas:

Right-to-die campaigner calls for legalisation of medical cannabis [The Irish Times]

Right-to-die campaigner Tom Curran has called on the Government to legalise the use of cannabis for medical purposes.  Mr Curran said only two things kept his wife, Marie Fleming, alive in her final years as she suffered from a progressive form of multiple sclerosis and both were illegal. The first was the prospect that her suffering would be ended by assisted suicide, while the second was the use of cannabis, which Mr Curran grew himself at home. Ms Fleming died of natural causes in December 2013, having failed in her Supreme Court bid to allow her husband help her to undergo assisted suicide at a clinic in Switzerland.

Danish couple face 10 years in prison for selling cannabis to cancer patients [Independent]

Police in Denmark have arrested a man and woman on suspicion of providing cannabis to cancer patients and people with other serious illnesses.  The couple, who were detained on Tuesday, could be sentenced to up to ten years in prison. Claus ‘Moffe’ Nielsen had previously admitted selling cannabis and spoken to Danish media about it. He said he knew he might be arrested one day, but did not care. A poll found in June that 88 per cent of Danes support legalising cannabis for medicinal use. A slim majority are also in favour of legalising cannabis for recreational use, according to other polls. In 2014, several Danish parties signed a political agreement to ring-fence funding for “research projects on pain relief, including the use of medicinal cannabis”.

Drugs haul found on Copenhagen Opera House roof [BBC]

Police in the Danish capital Copenhagen have revealed that they seized 75kg (165lbs) of marijuana found on the roof of the city’s prestigious Opera House earlier this year. Authorities have made the discovery of the stash public after seven months of investigations drew a blank, and are now treating the dozens of blocks of drugs as “lost property”, Danish TV 2 reports. The drugs were uncovered in February by workmen who were on the roof repairing water damage, and police kept it secret in the hope that the owner might return to recover their illicit goods, Ekstra Bladet newspaper says.

Prehistoric body found buried in cannabis-plant shroud at ancient Silk Road oasis [Independent]

A body wrapped in cannabis plants has been found in a prehistoric tomb in China, in a discovery which suggests the psychoactive plant may have been used for ritual purposes. The remains of a man, who died when he was about 35, were found wrapped in 13 plants in the Jiayi cemetery at Turpan in north-west China. Archaeologists said the plants, which were up to about a metre long, appeared to have been arranged as a “burial shroud”. Radiocarbon dating was used to estimate the tomb was created sometimes between 2,400 and 2,800 years ago. Writing in the journal Economic Botany, archaeologist Dr Hongen Jiang, of the Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, and colleagues described the discovery as “extraordinary”. “Research discussed in this paper describes 13 nearly whole plants of cannabis that appear to have been locally produced and purposefully arranged and used as a burial shroud which was placed upon a male corpse,” they said. “This unique discovery provides new insight into the ritualistic use of cannabis in prehistoric central Eurasia.”