from youngturks
Sunday, August 11, 2013
Business Symposium To Focus On Legalization Of Medical Marijuana
from cbs
CHICAGO (CBS) – Coming up in two weeks in downtown Chicago, an underground industry will step into the spotlight, at a symposium on marijuana growing.
WBBM Newsradio’s John Cody reports the National Cannabis Industry Association, or NCIA, foresees 1,000 jobs will be generated due to the legalization of medical marijuana in Illinois.
“There are cultivation facilities, of which there will be 22 in Illinois; the dispensary facilities, of which there will be 60 in Illinois; and the people who make the infused products – things like lotions and lozenges, so that people who might not necessarily want to inhale marijuana through smoking or vaporizing will have other ways to consume it,” said NCIA deputy director Betty Aldworth.
- WBBM Newsradio's John Cody
00:00
Then there’s the white collar support any serious business needs, like accountants who specialize in marijuana revenues and taxes, Aldworth said.
“Software providers, insurance providers, attorneys, and others; all will be providing services for these businesses,” she said. “One thing that will be very important in Illinois is safety and potency testing, so analytical laboratories are needed as well, to ensure that the medicine that’s being provided is safe and of a known potency.”
The medial marijuana measure in Illinois establishes a four-year pilot program to allow patients with debilitating illnesses to legally obtain and use marijuana to alleviate their pain.
Conditions that would qualify a person to get medical marijuana would include cancer, multiple sclerosis, HIV/AIDS, glaucoma, Alzheimer’s disease, Crohn’s disease, muscular dystrophy, severe fibromyalgia, spinal cord disease, and more.
Medical marijuana could be purchased from one of 60 dispensing centers that would be established throughout the state. Patients could not grow their own marijuana. Rather, 22 growing centers would be overseen by the Illinois Department of Agriculture.
Dispensary workers would have to undergo background checks, and stores would be monitored by surveillance cameras 24 hours a day.
The $350-per-ticket Cannabusiness Symposium & Networking Reception on Aug. 24 at the Embassy Suites Chicago – Downtown,
600 N. State St., is designed for entrepreneurs and potential investors in the state’s soon-to-blossom medical marijuana business.
600 N. State St., is designed for entrepreneurs and potential investors in the state’s soon-to-blossom medical marijuana business.
Friday, August 9, 2013
Why I changed my mind on weed - Dr. Sanjay Gupta
from cnn
Why I changed my mind on weed
August 9, 2013 -- Updated 0044 GMT (0844 HKT)
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Dr. Sanjay Gupta says we have been "systematically misled" on marijuana
- DEA lists marijuana as a schedule 1 substance with "high potential for abuse"
- Most recent research on marijuana has been on its negative effects, Gupta says
- Studies on marijuana require approval from National Instituteon Drug Abuse
(CNN) -- Over the last year, I have been working on a new documentary called "Weed." The title "Weed" may sound cavalier, but the content is not.
I traveled around the world to interview medical leaders, experts, growers and patients. I spoke candidly to them, asking tough questions. What I found was stunning.
Long before I began this project, I had steadily reviewed the scientific literature on medical marijuana from the United States and thought it was fairly unimpressive. Reading these papers five years ago, it was hard to make a case for medicinal marijuana. I even wrote about this in a TIME magazine article, back in 2009, titled "Why I would Vote No on Pot."
Well, I am here to apologize.
I apologize because I didn't look hard enough, until now. I didn't look far enough. I didn't review papers from smaller labs in other countries doing some remarkable research, and I was too dismissive of the loud chorus of legitimate patients whose symptoms improved on cannabis.
Instead, I lumped them with the high-visibility malingerers, just looking to get high. I mistakenly believed the Drug Enforcement Agency listed marijuana as a schedule 1 substance because of sound scientific proof. Surely, they must have quality reasoning as to why marijuana is in the category of the most dangerous drugs that have "no accepted medicinal use and a high potential for abuse."
Dr. Sanjay Gupta is a neurosurgeon and CNN's chief medical correspondent.
They didn't have the science to support that claim, and I now know that when it comes to marijuana neither of those things are true. It doesn't have a high potential for abuse, and there are very legitimate medical applications. In fact, sometimes marijuana is the only thing that works. Take the case ofCharlotte Figi, who I met in Colorado. She started having seizures soon after birth. By age 3, she was having 300 a week, despite being on seven different medications. Medical marijuana has calmed her brain, limiting her seizures to 2 or 3 per month.
I have seen more patients like Charlotte first hand, spent time with them and come to the realization that it is irresponsible not to provide the best care we can as a medical community, care that could involve marijuana.
We have been terribly and systematically misled for nearly 70 years in the United States, and I apologize for my own role in that.
I hope this article and upcoming documentary will help set the record straight.
On August 14, 1970, the Assistant Secretary of Health, Dr. Roger O. Egeberg wrote a letter recommending the plant, marijuana, be classified as a schedule 1 substance, and it has remained that way for nearly 45 years. My research started with a careful reading of that decades old letter. What I found was unsettling. Egeberg had carefully chosen his words:
"Since there is still a considerable void in our knowledge of the plant and effects of the active drug contained in it, our recommendation is that marijuana be retained within schedule 1 at least until the completion of certain studies now underway to resolve the issue."
Not because of sound science, but because of its absence, marijuana was classified as a schedule 1 substance. Again, the year was 1970. Egeberg mentions studies that are underway, but many were never completed. As my investigation continued, however, I realized Egeberg did in fact have important research already available to him, some of it from more than 25 years earlier.
High risk of abuse
In 1944, New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia commissioned research to be performed by the New York Academy of Science. Among their conclusions: they found marijuana did not lead to significant addiction in the medical sense of the word. They also did not find any evidence marijuana led to morphine, heroin or cocaine addiction.
We now know that while estimates vary, marijuana leads to dependence in around 9 to 10% of its adult users. By comparison, cocaine, a schedule 2 substance "with less abuse potential than schedule 1 drugs" hooks 20% of those who use it. Around 25% of heroin users become addicted.
The worst is tobacco, where the number is closer to 30% of smokers, many of whom go on to die because of their addiction.
There is clear evidence that in some people marijuana use can lead to withdrawal symptoms, including insomnia, anxiety and nausea. Even considering this, it is hard to make a case that it has a high potential for abuse. The physical symptoms of marijuana addiction are nothing like those of the other drugs I've mentioned. I have seen the withdrawal from alcohol, and it can be life threatening.
I do want to mention a concern that I think about as a father. Young, developing brains are likely more susceptible to harm from marijuana than adult brains. Some recent studies suggest that regular use in teenage years leads to a permanent decrease in IQ. Other research hints at a possible heightened risk of developing psychosis.
Much in the same way I wouldn't let my own children drink alcohol, I wouldn't permit marijuana until they are adults. If they are adamant about trying marijuana, I will urge them to wait until they're in their mid-20s when their brains are fully developed.
Medical benefit
While investigating, I realized something else quite important. Medical marijuana is not new, and the medical community has been writing about it for a long time. There were in fact hundreds of journal articles, mostly documenting the benefits. Most of those papers, however, were written between the years 1840 and 1930. The papers described the use of medical marijuana to treat "neuralgia, convulsive disorders, emaciation," among other things.
A search through the U.S. National Library of Medicine this past year pulled up nearly 20,000 more recent papers. But the majority were research into the harm of marijuana, such as "Bad trip due to anticholinergic effect of cannabis," or "Cannabis induced pancreatitits" and "Marijuana use and risk of lung cancer."
In my quick running of the numbers, I calculated about 6% of the current U.S. marijuana studies investigate the benefits of medical marijuana. The rest are designed to investigate harm. That imbalance paints a highly distorted picture.
The challenges of marijuana research
To do studies on marijuana in the United States today, you need two important things.
First of all, you need marijuana. And marijuana is illegal. You see the problem. Scientists can get research marijuana from a special farm in Mississippi, which is astonishingly located in the middle of the Ole Miss campus, but it is challenging. When I visited this year, there was no marijuana being grown.
The second thing you need is approval, and the scientists I interviewed kept reminding me how tedious that can be. While a cancer study may first be evaluated by the National Cancer Institute, or a pain study may go through the National Institute for Neurological Disorders, there is one more approval required for marijuana: NIDA, the National Institute on Drug Abuse. It is an organization that has a core mission of studying drug abuse, as opposed to benefit.
Stuck in the middle are the legitimate patients who depend on marijuana as a medicine, oftentimes as their only good option.
Keep in mind that up until 1943, marijuana was part of the United States drug pharmacopeia. One of the conditions for which it was prescribed was neuropathic pain. It is a miserable pain that's tough to treat. My own patients have described it as "lancinating, burning and a barrage of pins and needles." While marijuana has long been documented to be effective for this awful pain, the most common medications prescribed today come from the poppy plant, including morphine, oxycodone and dilaudid.
Here is the problem. Most of these medications don't work very well for this kind of pain, and tolerance is a real problem.
Most frightening to me is that someone dies in the United Statesevery 19 minutes from a prescription drug overdose, mostly accidental. Every 19 minutes. It is a horrifying statistic. As much as I searched, I could not find a documented case of death from marijuana overdose.
It is perhaps no surprise then that 76% of physicians recentlysurveyed said they would approve the use of marijuana to help ease a woman's pain from breast cancer.
When marijuana became a schedule 1 substance, there was a request to fill a "void in our knowledge." In the United States, that has been challenging because of the infrastructure surrounding the study of an illegal substance, with a drug abuse organization at the heart of the approval process. And yet, despite the hurdles, we have made considerable progress that continues today.
Looking forward, I am especially intrigued by studies like those in Spain and Israel looking at the anti-cancer effects of marijuana and its components. I'm intrigued by the neuro-protective study by Lev Meschoulam in Israel, and research in Israel and the United States on whether the drug might help alleviate symptoms of PTSD. I promise to do my part to help, genuinely and honestly, fill the remaining void in our knowledge.
Citizens in 20 states and the District of Columbia have now voted to approve marijuana for medical applications, and more states will be making that choice soon. As for Dr. Roger Egeberg, who wrote that letter in 1970, he passed away 16 years ago.
I wonder what he would think if he were alive today
Thursday, August 8, 2013
Dr. Sanjay Gupta comes out in support of medical marijuana: ‘We have been terribly and systematically misled’
from nydailynews
Gupta, who is CNN's chief medical correspondent, said he had been too dismissive of research and case studies that pointed to benefits of medicinal marijuana.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 8, 2013, 5:21 PM
CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta says he has reversed his negative stance on medicinal marijuana.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta has something to say about marijuana: I was wrong.
The high-profile doc, who is CNN's chief medical correspondent, apologized for "not looking hard enough" at the research on medicinal marijuana that suggests it can help treat conditions from chronic pain to post-traumatic stress disorder.
"We have been terribly and systematically misled for nearly 70 years in the United States, and I apologize for my own role in that," he wrote in an op-ed published Thursday on CNN.com.
"It doesn't have a high potential for abuse, and there are very legitimate medical applications. In fact, sometimes marijuana is the only thing that works."
Gupta, who authored a 2009 Time magazine article titled "Why I would Vote No on Pot," changed his mind while working on his documentary "Weed," which airs Sunday at 8 p.m. on CNN.
ABIR SULTAN/EPA
U.S. scientists face numerous stumbling blocks in getting marijuana research approved, Gupta wrote in a CNN.com op-ed.
In an interview with Piers Morgan on Wednesday night, Gupta admitted to trying the substance himself "a while ago."
"I didn't particularly care for it, actually. It made me kind of anxious. It wasn't a very pleasant feeling," he said.
Still, he added, it doesn't make sense to categorize marijuana in the highest class of dangerous substances, ahead of cocaine, alcohol and cigarettes. Gupta said he did not come across a single incident of marijuana overdose in his research.
Scientists in the U.S. face a stumbling block to marijuana research in that it must be approved by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, "an organization that has a core mission of studying drug abuse, as opposed to benefit," Gupta wrote.
Recent studies in other countries have explored the anti-cancer effects of marijuana on brain cancer cells, and to ease the symptoms of PTSD.
"I promise to do my part to help, genuinely and honestly, fill the remaining void in our knowledge," he wrote.
tmiller@nydailynews.com
As America Legalizes Marijuana, AARP Generation Quintuples Experimentation
from huffpost
Posted: 08/08/2013 6:23 am
Making marijuana legal will encourage use, especially by young people. That is the go-to line for any drug prohibitionist who has been bludgeoned by the onslaught of marijuana legalization and medical marijuana exceptions now passed in 20 American states.
Unfortunately for them, the latest polling data from Gallup seems to show that further liberalization of American marijuana policy is not leading more young people down the supposedly slippery slope from marijuana initiation to full-blown heroin addiction. In fact, fewer young people are trying marijuana than when I began college in the mid-1980s.
In 1985, a full one-third (33 percent) of Americans had tried marijuana. In 1996, California became the first medical marijuana state and since then, 19 more have created exceptions to criminal prosecution for medical uses of cannabis. In 2012, Washington and Colorado became the first political jurisdictions in the world to fully legalize the possession of marijuana. Today, just 38 percent of Americans have tried marijuana.
The crosstabs of the poll are even more devastating for the idea that legalization entices young people. When I graduated high school in 1985, 56 percent of my generation aged 18-29 had tried marijuana. The figure now for that age group is just 36 percent.
The groups that have increased their experimentation with marijuana are over age 30. While 41 percent of the middle-aged (30-49) in 1985 had tried pot, the figure is now nearly half (49 percent). The increase is more pronounced for ages 50 to 64, rising from a mere 9 percent in 1985 to 44 percent today -- almost five times greater use! This means more people aged 30 to 64 are experimenting with marijuana than people in their college years. Among seniors age 65 and over, experimentation has nearly tripled, from 6 percent to 17 percent.
Current use of marijuana is still an area where young adults come out on top. Fourteen percent, or over one-third of the 18-29-year-olds who tried marijuana, are using it currently. Only one-out-of-seven of the 49 percent of 30-49-year-olds who tried marijuana are using it now (7 percent). Just 5 percent of people aged 50-64 are currently toking, which is about one-in-nine of those who tried it. Only one percent of seniors aged 65 and older are using pot now.
So, it seems that even though fewer young people are trying marijuana, more of them are currently using it. However, current use steadily declines as the marijuana smoker ages... so much for the super-potent, highly-addictive modern marijuana.
EARLIER ON HUFF/POST50:
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Wednesday, August 7, 2013
Buzzkill: Medical marijuana popularity threatens legal pot push
from fox
By Dan Springer
FoxNews.com
Washington state's new law legalizing pot is hitting a major snag from an unlikely source -- medical marijuana.
There is growing concern among state officials that as long as medical marijuana is largely unregulated and untaxed, its popularity will cut into the tax revenue expected when pot legally goes on sale for recreational use in 2014.
"People thought there were going to be laws surrounding it," said Washington state Republican Sen. Ann Rivers. "Medical marijuana is an avenue to sidestep the laws and regulations and the revenue."
Backers of legalization touted an expected $500 million tax windfall each year from selling recreational pot. But the state's pot consultant, UCLA professor Mark Kleiman, warns competition from medical marijuana could cut in half the amount of tax revenue the state receives.
"The two are not going to be able to exist side by side for very long," said Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs Mitch Baker.
Washington state passed its medical marijuana law in 1998. It requires no registry of medical marijuana patients and no taxation. Following passage of Initiative 502, which legalized up to an ounce of marijuana for all adults, the state Liquor Board has been considering a host of regulations. It's agreed to put a 25 percent excise tax on marijuana at three stages; the grower, the seller and the buyer. In addition, the buyer will have to pay the state sales tax.
The bottom line is medical marijuana will be a lot cheaper.
Lawmakers in Olympia debated closing that price gap by slapping a 20 percent tax on medical marijuana. The proposal was met with protest.
"It either is medicine, or it's not medicine," said Steve Sarich who heads the Cannabis Action Coalition. "But it can't be medicine and be taxed."
Sarich points out that no prescription drugs are currently taxed. John Worthington, who used marijuana to ease his chronic back pain, says a tax would push the price of his medicine too high. "I'd either have to go back to pharmaceutical drugs, which I've found to be harmful to me, or I'd have to do it illegally."
Lawmakers failed to pass a tax on medical marijuana in the last legislative session, but backers vowed to try again in 2014, around the same time pot is sold legally to healthy Washingtonians for the first time.
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