Naturally, the story gets around to placing a large share of the blame on “medical marijuana card holders, who end up with extra product, and are willing to part with it for a nominal fee.”

“I think it’s a well-agreed to assumption that a lot of illegal product that’s diverted from the Oregon market is coming from the medical side,” said Mark Pettinger, a spokesman for the Oregon Liquor Control Commission, which regulates the sale of recreational marijuana.

I wonder how anybody didn’t see that coming.

They talk about the “medical side” and the “recreational side,” as if these were separate and distinct markets. They’re not. Marijuana is fungible. To , “What’s in a name? that which we call a bud by any other name would smell as sweet.” I, as a non-medical consumer, will get just as much satisfaction, if not more, from smoking a medical bud as I do smoking a recreational bud.

So, we began by allowing the sick and disabled people the right to cultivate 3 mature plants, which we increased to 6 mature plants, which can produce up to ten-or-fifteen pounds of marijuana apiece if you’re growing Southern Oregon trees, or even 8 to 16 ounces apiece for a modest indoor Portland grow.

Then we told these sick and disabled people, who are often living on retirement and/or disability checks that don’t cover the rising costs of living, that they can only possess 24 ounces of marijuana from their 6-plant harvests. But whatever you do, sick and disabled people struggling to pay the bills, don’t sell any of that marijuana, even to other sick and disabled people!

Of course they’re selling their excess! Wouldn’t you?

This doesn’t even consider how many purchases that are happening in the pot shops where a medical cardholder, be they patient or caregiver, is making straw purchases for recreational buyers so they don’t have to pay 20 percent more in taxes. That doesn’t harm the pot shop owner, but it is reducing the tax haul for the city and state of that pot shop.

When marijuana is totally prohibited, the enemy is the profit motive enjoyed by pharma, prisons, cops, and other industries that would suffer under legalization. But as we legalize marijuana, the enemy is the profit motive still – the profit states want in high marijuana taxes, the profit pot shop owners and cannabis growers want in legal sales, and the profit pharma seeks in moving cannabinoid medicines through the FDA approval process.

Legalization’s first profit-enemy was the illegal marijuana sellers and cannabis growers who opposed the initiatives that legalized the first recreational marijuana states. They knew they couldn’t compete with well-capitalized growers, economies of scale, and enormous selection that legalization would bring. They fought legalization to protect the prohibition profit margin.

After legalization, those sellers and growers fight to survive in that margin between illicit production cost and legitimate taxed prices. Their efforts lead to news stories like the one above, where state officials mull ways of cracking down on those illegal sales.

Those crackdowns almost always lead to severe restrictions on the sick and disabled people in the medical marijuana programs. Total plant counts are reduced and options for selling excess are limited.

Meanwhile, states want that sweet marijuana tax money. They began by setting absurdly high tax rates far above what’s needed to regulate the system, in hopes of generating profit. They fail to understand that sin taxes on cigarettes and alcohol work because growing tobacco and distilling alcohol are enormously difficult tasks for most people and, even with the taxes, smokes and booze are reasonably cheap. Sin taxes on marijuana are destined to fail because cannabis is simply too easy to cultivate.

That then leads to states curtailing or ending the right of people to cultivate their own cannabis. Arizona in 2010 began the move by denying home grow rights to any medical marijuana patient living within 25 miles of a dispensary, which proponents argued was to “guarantee a market for the dispensaries so they are viable.”

Since then, every state that has passed a medical marijuana law has either kept cultivation illegal or restricted it so severely you need to demonstrate “hardship” and/or live 25-to-40 miles away from a dispensary to cultivate cannabis at home. Nevada, which had allowed home grow, passed a law in 2013 to create a 25-mile rule like Arizona’s. Now, with 29 medical marijuana states, more of those states deny home grow rights than allow them.

Another profit-enemy of home grow legalization is the pharmaceutical industry, which is working to get its pharmaceutical cannabinoid preparations on pharmacy shelves. Their influence has led to six of the most recent medical marijuana states to ban not just cultivation of cannabis, but smoking of marijuana as well. After all, if you’re accustomed to going to a special building to buy a bottle of non-smokable cannabis medicine, it’s much easier to transition you to buying Big Pharma’s bottle from a pharmacy.

On the recreational side, in 2012 Washington infamously legalized possession while maintaining the illegality of cultivation. Thankfully, most states have passed laws allowing home cultivation, but these are the low-hanging fruit states with the greatest support for marijuana. Nevada, echoing its 2013 medical law, created legalization that bans home cultivation within 25 miles of a pot shop. As New Jersey and Rhode Island contemplate legalization through their legislatures, home grow rights are off the table.

We are in a tenuous time for legalization. After Michigan gets legal in 2018 (we hope), the pro-marijuana states with initiative power are mostly done. Legalization will have to proceed through legislatures that want big marijuana tax profits, lobbied by health care industries to protect those profits by banning home grow, then protected once established by legal cannabis growers and marijuana retailers who don’t want unregulated competition. Diversion, through medical programs or old-fashioned bootlegging, won’t be seen as a failure owing to too much regulation, inspections, testing, and taxation, but as a failure of regulators to crack down hard enough on the illegal market.

The post How the Profit Motive is Killing Marijuana Home Grow Rights appeared first on Weed News.

“We’ve defended the borders of other nations, while leaving our own borders wide open, for anyone to cross — and for drugs to pour in at a now unprecedented rate. We will stop the drugs from pouring into our country and poisoning our youth.”

-President Donald J. Trump, Address to Congress, February 28, 2017

According to the occupant of the White House, our borders, particularly the one with Mexico, are overrun with illegal immigrants sneaking into the country and bringing with them drugs and crime.

As with much of Donald Trump’s rhetoric, it does not square with the reality in which the rest of us exist.

I started with a visit to the website of the US Customs and Border Patrol. There they publish that detail the amount of immigrants and drugs they have seized.

The first thing I noticed, despite the bleating from Trumpists that the Mexicans “,” it looks as though we’re intercepting less than half the amount of immigrants illegally attempting to cross our border as we have since Nixon was president.

In fact, looking at the five-year rolling average (to smooth out one-year spikes) we find that we’ve got the second-lowest rate of captured illegal immigrants since the early 1970s. Our current five-year rolling average sits at just above 400,000.

In other words, we’re not “leaving our own borders wide open, for anyone to cross,” at least, compared to the span of Reagan’s 2nd term, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II administrations, when the five-year rolling average stayed well above one million.

But what about the drugs? Well, here is a look at the CBP’s stats for drug seizures over the past six years (all the data they make available):

Over the past six years, seizures of drugs by CBP have declined, with marijuana making up all but 1.2 percent of the drugs seized by weight. The amount of marijuana seized has declined every year since Colorado and Washington legalized marijuana. The  reports that farmers in Mexico are turning away from cannabis as a crop, since legalization has dropped the going price for wholesale Mexican marijuana:

Farmers in the storied “Golden Triangle” region of Mexico’s Sinaloa state, which has produced the country’s most notorious gangsters and biggest marijuana harvests, say they are no longer planting the crop. Its wholesale price has collapsed in the past five years, from $100 per kilogram to less than $25.

“It’s not worth it anymore,” said Rodrigo Silla, 50, a lifelong cannabis farmer who said he couldn’t remember the last time his family and others in their tiny hamlet gave up growing mota. “I wish the Americans would stop with this legalization.”

In other words, drugs are not pouring into America “at a now unprecedented rate,” at least as long as Mr. Trump is considering marijuana a drug.

Heroin seizures have increased slightly since marijuana legalization. But the rate is not “unprecedented,” as we seized more in 2014 than 2016. Part of this can be traced to the legalization killing the profits of Mexican-grown cannabis, and those farmers turning instead to producing opium. As Washington Post notes:

Mexican heroin is flooding north as U.S. authorities trying to contain an epidemic of have tightened controls on synthetic opiates such as hydrocodone and OxyContin. As the pills become more costly and difficult to obtain, Mexican trafficking organizations have found new markets for heroin in places such as Winchester, Va., and Brattleboro, Vt., where, until recently, needle use for narcotics was rare or unknown.

However, the demand for those opiates north of the border has been fueled by the drug companies that produce legal pharmaceutical opiates like OxyContin and Vicodin, unleashed by the DEA’s Office of Diversion Control to produce greater and greater quantities of the addictive opiates.

Maddeningly, Diversion Control increased those opiate quotas specifically for the legal users:

“What you have to understand,” [DEA Supervisory Special Agent Gary] Boggs replied, “is that you do have legitimate patients and they’re fishing from the same pond that the illegitimate patients are fishing from, so you have to be cautious not to restrict the quota to the point that when the legitimate parties go to the pool, all the fish haven’t been taken out by the illegitimate parties.”

Cocaine seizures are down at the border, aside from a one-year spike.

The only drug for which the Trump Administration can claim there are unprecedented amounts flowing over our borders is methamphetamine:

The website InSightCrime, which focuses on Latin American crime trends, :

According to a report () by the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), an independent body tasked with monitoring the United Nations drug accords, Mexican authorities seized over 19 tons of methamphetamine in 2014, a 34 percent increase from the previous year. Authorities also discovered 131 methamphetamine laboratories, most of which were located in the states of Guerrero, Michoacán, and Sinaloa.

In addition, seizures of methamphetamine at the US border have “increased by a factor of three since 2009,” the report states. In response, the smuggling methods of Mexican criminal groups are becoming more sophisticated in order to avoid detection. Methamphetamine is increasingly being diluted in a liquid solvent, making the drug harder to detect, according to the INCB.

But is it the methamphetamine poisoning our youth that Mr. Trump refers to, or the marijuana? According to Monitoring the Future, when you take marijuana out of the equation, fewer teens are using drugs monthly than ever measured in the 21st Century:

But when you consider monthly marijuana use by teens, it rose sharply after leading up to the legalization of medical marijuana in California.

So, the only way Donald Trump is being honest when he says “We will stop the drugs from pouring into our country and poisoning our youth” is if he’s intending to stop methamphetamine from pouring into our country and intending to stop marijuana from poisoning our youth.

The post Trump’s Lies ˛ÝÁń¶ĚĘÓƵ Drugs And Immigrants Crossing Our Borders appeared first on Weed News.

Another news station has done a test on marijuana smokers on a driving course and has come to two conclusions that we already know:

1. Having marijuana in your system is no indicator of any driving impairment, and
2. Smoking marijuana then immediately driving is going to reduce some people’s ability to drive.

Shortly after Washington legalized marijuana, local news station . It was then we met a young woman named Addy Norton, whose driving was only “borderline”, according to an observing drug recognition expert (DRE) police officer, once she had reached 56 nanograms of active THC per milliliter of her blood (ng/mL). Washington had included an unscientific 5 ng/mL per se DUID punishment in its law and the KIRO test provided clear evidence of the worthlessness of the limit for determining actual impairment.

Now, a FOX station in Boston, WFXT, has . Before we continue, let’s be clear that the WFXT testing is referring to nanograms of active THC in their urine, not in their blood. At least, I think they are. Toward the end of the piece, one of the doctors refers to metabolites, which is an even-more unscientific method of punishing cannabis-using drivers. This makes comparisons to the KIRO test imperfect.

However, many states use detection of active THC or inactive metabolites in urine as the basis for their zero tolerance marijuana DUID laws. These urine tests, according to WFXT, register a positive result at 50ng/mL. So, we can consider them useful for debunking the idea of zero-tolerance marijuana DUIDs specifically and the idea of stoned mayhem on the freeways in general.

Here are the results of the test – each “run” followed smoking 3/4 gram of Critical Cheese that tested at 22.74 percent THC:

1. Quentin – 36-year-old male, moderate user.
   Baseline = 94ng/mL, “no signs of impairment”
   First Run = “without any significant issues”
   Second Run = “only minor issues”
   Third Run = “more signs of impairment, hitting a cone”
2. Carol – 56-year-old female, daily medical user
   Baseline = 94ng/mL, “only minimal trouble”
   First Run = “she did back into the rear barrier in the parking test”, “She seemed a little bit more confused”
   Second Run = “crashed through several cones”
   Third Run = “more signs of impairment, slowed down significantly”
3. Corinne – 24-year-old female, daily recreational user
   Baseline = 100ng/mL, “no obvious signs of impairment”
   First Run = “failed to stop after the high speed emergency lane change”
   Second Run = ” hit a series of smaller cones on the side of the emergency stop and lane change”
   Third Run = “more signs of impairment, sped up through some parts of the driving course”
4. Don – 65-year-old male, moderate medical user
   Baseline = 104ng/mL, “excelled in the first runs”
   First Run = “knocked down one cone in the slalom”
   Second Run = “only minor issues”
   Third Run = ”more signs of impairment, slowed down significantly”

Dr. Jordan Tishler observed the test and noted that “the sky isn’t falling and not everybody crashed and burned.” Everyone involved with the testing observed that the effects of marijuana on each volunteer was different, with some speeding up and others slowing down. Even at the highest levels of marijuana use, the volunteers were able to successfully complete many portions of the course.

When the story threw back to the anchors at the FOX station, one seemed unable to believe that we wouldn’t be able to set a fixed limit, like alcohol, to determine whether or not a driver is impaired. But this isn’t surprising to anybody who understands how marijuana works in the body. That includes the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which that “It is inadvisable to try and predict effects based on blood THC concentrations alone, and currently impossible to predict specific effects based on THC-COOH concentrations.”

The only surprise to me in this test is how the older drivers slowed down in the third run and the younger drivers sped up. Other than that, we found that prohibitionists need to back off the idea that having weed in your system means you’re more dangerous on the road and that tokers need to back off the idea that smoking pot then immediately driving means you’re not more dangerous on the road.

The post Once Again, Marijuana Positive Drivers Show “No Signs of Impairment” appeared first on Weed News.

on the release of a new report from the National Academy of Sciences on the medical efficacy of marijuana. The national marijuana organizations are promoting it, too. This is a phenomenal report that counters many of the lies and exaggerations about marijuana that are endlessly parroted by prohibitionists.

However, , “You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have the facts of life, the facts of life.” The facts in this report about marijuana are both good and bad.

If we’re going to be promoting the good in this report, we’d better be ready to defend against the bad in it that will be pounced on by our opponents. Then we need to be able to explain to the public why they should believe the good parts and reject the bad parts.

Therapeutic Effects – We Lose Dementia and Glaucoma

While most of this research is summarizing the effects of “cannabinoids”, the authors are broadly including “cannabis or cannabinoids” in .

With recommendations based on descending levels of conclusive, substantial, moderate, and limited amounts of evidence, we can proudly boast that marijuana is good for chronic pain; nausea and vomiting from chemo; improving sleep for people with chronic pain, fibromyalgia, multiple sclerosis, and sleep apnea; weight gain for HIV/AIDS patients; multiple sclerosis spasticity; Tourette syndrome; social anxiety; post-traumatic stress; and traumatic brain injury / hemorrhage.

But if we accept the report’s conclusion on those, then we have to accept the evidence they found that marijuana doesn’t help dementia, glaucoma, and depression in chronic pain and multiple sclerosis patients.

Cancer – Our Lungs Are Safe; Our Balls Not So Much

It’s great that there is official recognition that cannabis does not cause head, neck, and lung cancers. But it seems that comes with the price of accepting a risk of testicular cancer.

Cardio/Respiratory – Less Diabetes, More Strokes & COPD

We can confidently state that cannabis consumers face less risk of metabolic syndrome and diabetes, and we have better lung strength. But then we have to accept that we have greater risk of heart attack, stroke, pre-diabetes, bronchitis, and COPD. Although, if we stop smoking pot, our cough will go away.

Disease, Injury, And Death – Car Wrecks and Overdosed Kids

Marijuana’s really good for protecting the livers of people with Hepatitis C. But smoking pot makes driving riskier and legalizing it means more kids will accidentally eat it. And we really can’t tell you whether or not smoking too much pot can kill you.

Pregancy – Smaller Babies Sent to Intensive Care

Expectant mothers who smoke pot are likelier to have smaller babies, complications during pregnancy, and babies that have to go to the intensive care unit.

Psychosocial – You’ll Be A Poor, Unemployed Dropout

Obviously, when you are currently high, learning, memory, and attention are affected. You’re also more likely to get bad grades, drop-out of school, be unemployed, make less money, and have difficulty acting as a mature adult.

Mental Health – It Ain’t Good, Folks

If you smoke marijuana, you’re likelier to develop schizophrenia and have more hallucinations and blunted affect when you do. You’re likelier to become psychotic, but at least you can think better when you do. You’re likelier to be depressed, anxious, and suicidal, and succeed at suicide if you try. You’re likelier to become bipolar and be more manic when you do. If you have PTSD, your symptoms are likelier to be more severe.

Conclusion – So What? Alcohol And Tobacco Are Far Worse

I could spend another 800 words debunking all of the negative conclusions I’ve listed above. But the point of this article is to demonstrate why doing so is an unnecessary distraction from the real issue: the freedom of adults to do with their bodies and minds what they choose, even if it is destructive.

Crowing about the good in this report’s Therapeutic Effects section only reinforces the frame that “if we can show how awesome marijuana is, then they’ll let us have it!” – a frame that redefines the use of cannabis from an expression of personal sovereignty, as is our natural right, to a privilege that is only extended to those substances the government deems “safe”.

For every category listed in this article, we could cite far more horrible statistically-valid outcomes for regular tobacco and alcohol use. The safety of the substance doesn’t really enter into the discussion, does it?

The facts of life are that this is about cultural bigotry – cannabigotry – plain and simple. Those who consume the culture’s approved substances have a right, regardless of danger, to use them; the rest of us who choose forbidden substances do not have that right, regardless of their safety.

The post Not So Fast: Nat’l Academy of Sciences Says Marijuana Is Good AND Bad appeared first on Weed News.

°Őłó±đĚýWashington Post is the latest media outlet to that’s claiming Washington’s 8th & 10th graders have been influenced by marijuana legalization there, reducing their perception of marijuana’s harm and leading them to smoke it more.

Christopher Ingraham does his usual great job framing the study as an outlier compared to numerous reports of legalization causing no increase in teen marijuana use nationally or in Colorado. In his diligence to provide voices of balance on the issue, he emailed New York University professor of public policy, Mark A. R. Kleiman, the man who was tapped by Washington State to be their cannabis policy consultant, to offer his opinion:

In an email, Kleiman pointed out that in Washington state, the recreational marijuana market didn’t open until halfway through 2014, and then only in limited form. That’s halfway through the “after” period (2013 to 2015) in the JAMA Pediatrics study.

Kleiman said there’s an even easier way to ensure that adolescent marijuana use remains at a minimum level — make sure marijuana doesn’t become too cheap.

“There’s reason to think that adolescents are more price-sensitive than adults with respect to cannabis use,” he said, “so I’d advise states that legalize to do what they can to keep prices from falling.”

What reason would that be? Extensive research? Reports from teens themselves? Just a wild-ass guess?

The hypothesis that high marijuana prices should dissuade teen marijuana smoking doesn’t pass the smell test. Prohibition has already jacked the price of marijuana far above what its natural cost should be, yet teen marijuana use has risen and fallen with no correlation to its change in price. Legalization in the west has dramatically lowered the price of marijuana, yet teen marijuana use rates are remaining steady.

Comparing Marijuana Prices to Teen Marijuana Use Rates

I decided to see how marijuana price correlates with teen marijuana use. If Kleiman’s right, we should find more marijuana use where the price is low and vice-versa.

At first glace, there seems to be a little bit of a correlation there. Twenty-two states where the price of marijuana is greater than the US average of $320 an ounce are also states where the monthly use of marijuana by teens is below the national average of 7.2 percent.

But still, it’s an imperfect measure. You can find two legal states, Colorado and Oregon, where the price of marijuana is below $250. Their teen use of marijuana is 11.13 and 9.42 percent, respectively. Yet you can find two illegal states, Vermont and New Hampshire, where the price of marijuana is around $350, and their teen use rates are similar to Colorado and Oregon, at 10.86 and 9.44, respectively.

You can find two rural prohibition states, Utah and Idaho, where the price of marijuana is around $280. Their teen use of marijuana is 4.54 and 6.51 percent, respectively. Yet you can find two other rural prohibition states, Iowa and North Dakota, where the price of marijuana is over $360, and their teen use rates are similar to Utah and Idaho, at 5.30 and 6.21 percent, respectively.

Comparing Marijuana Prices to Teen Marijuana Use Increases

But that’s just a snapshot in time. The UC Davis study Kleiman is commenting on makes the claim that legalization increased young teen usage in Washington between 2010 and 2015, even though it didn’t in Colorado or nationally. What if we take a look at how teen marijuana use has changed between 2010 and 2015?

This gives us even less of a correlation than the current price data. High price states were pretty evenly split between teen marijuana use increases and decreases. Low price states were also nearly evenly split.

A few surprises stand out in this analysis. While the legal states of Colorado and Washington saw increases in teen use along with their low prices, Oregon’s teen use rates didn’t budge with their lowest prices in the nation. Meanwhile, North Dakota has both the most expensive marijuana and the greatest rate of teen marijuana use increase. Virginia, with the second-most expensive marijuana in the country saw a nearly 20 percent decline in teen use rates. Oklahoma had the greatest decrease in teen use rates, yet has marijuana costing $350 an ounce.

Expensive Marijuana Means More Teen Dealers

No matter how you slice and dice this data, it misses a crucial point: the artificially-inflated price of marijuana only guarantees more market share for illegal dealers, many of whom are teenagers.

Kleiman and other public policy experts base this Keep Pot Expensive idea on the data from alcohol and tobacco. It has been shown that increased taxes on cigarettes and alcohol have helped contribute to the massive declines in use of those substances, now down to the lowest recorded levels ever.

There’s only one problem with applying that policy to marijuana: few people have the resources and ability to grow tobacco or distill spirits efficiently enough to sell them for profit at prices below the legal market.

We’re already seeing how 20-to-37 percent taxation on marijuana in the legal states has left a thriving underground market for marijuana, aided by the legality of home growing (except Washington) and personal possession. It’s that market that is selling to the teens, not the overtaxed legal market.

If we really want to reduce teen use of marijuana, the goal should be to move as much of that market into the adults-only stores that check ID as we can. The better the legal market can compete with the low costs of home growing, the more difficult it becomes to make a living as an illegal weed dealer who sells to kids.

The post Prohibition Pot Prices Aren’t Deterring Teen Marijuana Use appeared first on Weed News.

It’s a perfect example of prohibition propaganda at work. Here’s the claim:

In Washington state, eighth graders’ perception of marijuana’s harmfulness fell by about 14 percent from before legalization (2010 to 2012) to afterward (2013 to 2015). Similarly, among 10th graders, the perception of harmfulness decreased about 16 percent.

Additionally, the proportion of kids reporting marijuana use in the previous month rose 2 percent among eighth graders and about 4 percent among 10th graders over that same period.

OK, so it’s not so much that łŮ±đ±đ˛Ô˛ő’ views on marijuana changed after legalization, it’s that Washington łŮ±đ±đ˛Ô˛ő’ views on marijuana changed. But wait, aren’t high school seniors also “teens”?

There were no significant changes in perceived marijuana harmfulness or use among 12th graders in Washington, however. The researchers speculate that older students may already have a fully formed opinion of marijuana.

OK, so, it’s not that Washington łŮ±đ±đ˛Ô˛ő’ views on marijuana changed, so much as younger Washington łŮ±đ±đ˛Ô˛ő’ views on marijuana changed following legalization in late 2012 that didn’t provide for the state’s first legal marijuana sale until July of 2014.

I understand that Colorado legalized marijuana in that same time frame. Did the younger teens in that state also find marijuana less harmful and increase their usage of it?

Additionally, the researchers didn’t see any significant before-and-after-legalization differences among students in Colorado. Possibly, they say, this might be because adolescents there were exposed to a robust medical marijuana industry before its recreational use was legalized.

Oh, I see. Since 2009, the existence of commercial medical marijuana transactions in Colorado already made those teens less fearful of marijuana and more likely to use it. Because Washington State’s  don’t count, since they were technically illegal and teens care about such things. Right.

I like to look up the data that is referred to in these kinds of stories, just to fact-check. According to the UC Davis researchers, they used data from the annual  (MTF) study. The problem for me is that MTF doesn’t provide state-level data online; I don’t know how the UC Davis people got a hold of it.

However, there is another data set, the National Survey on Drug Use & Health (NSDUH), which is a larger survey that does provide me with state-level data to peruse. Unfortunately, I can’t break this data down by 8th, 10th, and 12th graders, but rather by the 12-17 age group. That shaves off the 18-year-olds who could be in MTF’s 12th graders and would likely perceive less harm and use more. However, it also adds in the 12-year-olds who haven’t reached 8th grade who would likely perceive more harm and use less.

Let’s see how that stacks up against the UC Davis hypothesis.

At first glance, this seems to back up the UC Davis assertion about Washington State. It had the greatest decrease in harm perception (-42.15%) and its teen use shot up by over a quarter (+25.59%). The other state to legalize, Colorado, saw harm perception drop by over a quarter (-26.23%) and usage increase by over a quarter (+26.74%).

But look deeper at the only two other states to post greater usage increases than the two legalized states. Utah’s monthly usage increased by almost half (+47.28%) and North Dakota’s increased over a quarter (+27.27%). They didn’t legalize marijuana and they didn’t have active medical dispensaries, did they? In fact, since 2009, Utah has been consistently #1 and North Dakota consistently in the top ten for states with the greatest belief among teens that regular marijuana use is dangerous.

Other tidbits of information we can glean from the NSDUH numbers:

• Six of the top 10 states with the greatest decrease in perception of harm were prohibition states;
• Three of the top 10 states with the greatest decrease in perception of harm saw decreases in marijuana use;
• Over half of the states (27) saw declines in teen marijuana use, despite every state’s declining perception of harm;
• Massachusetts’ perception of harm has decreased the least, remaining virtually steady (-1.66%) since 2009, yet marijuana use decreased (-13.53%);
• Minnesota (-21.65%), Tennessee (-20.34%), Ohio (-21.23%), and Illinois (-22.07%) are right near the US average (-21.35%) for the decline in perception of harm and none of those states had medical marijuana in this time frame, yet Ohio (-20.63%) and Illinois (-10.36%) use declined and Minnesota (+10.84%) and Tennessee (+6.74%) use increased;
• California’s had the most robust medical marijuana market, pre-dating Colorado and Washington by a decade, yet while California’s perception of harm dropped almost a quarter (-23.26%), its usage remained relatively stable (+1.63%);
• Iowa saw the greatest decrease in monthly use, dropping over a quarter (-25.50%), yet its decline in perception of harm (-21.49%) ranks in the middle of the pack and almost matched the US average;
• Two of the top 10 states for the least decrease in perception of harm saw increases in marijuana use.

Here’s the bottom line: when we’ve spent decades trying to scare kids into thinking smoking pot will scramble their brains and lead straight to heroin, of course they’re going to perceive of regular marijuana use as less harmful the more they’re exposed to realistic information about it. As teens see more adults using it legally without health and legal repercussions, of course they’re going to fear regular marijuana use less. Using łŮ±đ±đ˛Ô˛ő’ realization that they’ve been fed reefer madness for drug education is no way to gauge whether they’ll use marijuana.

Isn’t it remarkable how far some public policy experts will stretch to find any little nugget of predictive harm about marijuana legalization, while ignoring the correlation between liberalizing marijuana laws and the ?

The post UC Davis Study Cherry-Picks Data For Youth Marijuana Legalization Fear appeared first on Weed News.

There are now eight states where adult possession and use of personal amounts of marijuana are legal. Four of those states share borders – all the way from Blaine, Washington, at the Canadian border down to San Ysidro, California, at the Mexican border. You can drive 1,380 miles down Interstate 5 and the ounce of weed in your pocket is perfectly legal.

Except when you’re crossing the state line.

Despite all four of these states having identical personal possession laws allowing adults to carry one ounce of marijuana with them in public, it is against state and federal law to transport that marijuana across the state line.

Federal law recognizes no legality in marijuana. While the feds can’t force a state to punish you for possessing marijuana, technically a federal agent from the DEA, a ranger from the Bureau of Land Management at a National Park or other federal land, military police on any military base, or a US Marshal or an officer of the court in a federal building could arrest you for possession. That’s a misdemeanor that can earn you up to a year in jail (and 15 days mandatory if it’s a second offense) and a $1,000 fine. Transporting marijuana across state lines or possession of a single cannabis plant could set you up for a sale or distribution felony worth 5 years in prison and a quarter-million-dollar fine.

Washington has made it clear that exporting marijuana is against the law. I-502 contains penalties for commercial licensees that transport marijuana across state lines, but is mute on the transportation of marijuana by non-commercial entities. Presumably, since I-502 only authorizes commercial distribution of marijuana “within the state”,

On October 21, 2013, the state Liquor and Cannabis Board issued regarding their implementation of permanent rules for I-502.

Two comments were received regarding importing and exporting of marijuana. One person asked that importing of marijuana and marijuana seeds be allowed. One person asked that marijuana licensees be allowed to export marijuana and marijuana infused products to other states that have legalized marijuana.

LCB response: The law does not allow import or export of marijuana or marijuana infused products.

Oregon passed a law (HB 4014) expressly forbidding the import and export of marijuana across state lines. If you’re caught crossing the Oregon border with under an ounce, you get a $260 fine; over an ounce gets you a Class A misdemeanor, and over a pound or any amount for sale gets you a Class C felony.

475B.185. (1) A person may not import marijuana items into this state or export marijuana items from this state.

(2) Except as provided in subsection (3) of this section, a violation of this section is a Class B violation.

(3) A violation of this section is a:

(a) Class C felony, if the importation or exportation: (A) Is for consideration and the person holds a license under ORS 475B.070, 475B.090, 475B.100 or 475B.110; or (B) Concerns usable marijuana and the importation or exportation exceeds 16 ounces of usable marijuana.

(b) Class A misdemeanor, if the importation or exportation: (A) Is not for consideration and the person holds a license under ORS 475B.070, 475B.090, 475B.100 or 475B.110; or (B) Concerns usable marijuana and the importation or exportation exceeds one ounce of usable marijuana.

California reiterated the illegality of transferring marijuana out of state .

26080.(a) This division shall not be construed to authorize or permit a licensee to transport or distribute, or cause to be transported or distributed, marijuana or marijuana products outside the state, unless authorized by federal law.

Nevada law makes it clear that importation and transport (export) of marijuana is expressly illegal.

NRS 453.321 Offer, attempt or commission of unauthorized act relating to controlled or counterfeit substance unlawful; penalties; prohibition against probation or suspension of sentence for certain repeat offenders.

1.  Except as authorized by the provisions of NRS 453.011 to 453.552, inclusive, it is unlawful for a person to:

(a) Import, transport, sell, exchange, barter, supply, prescribe, dispense, give away or administer a controlled or counterfeit substance;

While all four of these contiguous legal marijuana states ban marijuana crossing their borders, realistically it is impossible for them to enforce this law adequately. Oregon and California allow all adults to cultivate their own marijuana, while Nevada only allows cultivation for those living farther than 25 miles from a retail shop. Washington bans all home cultivation. However, the laws in all these states allow the possession of marijuana, period; the law says nothing about the marijuana has to be “store-bought” in Washington State.

Therefore, you’d think that if you took the marijuana out of the store package and put it in your own container, it would be impossible for authorities in these four states to determine that you aren’t just in possession of marijuana legally gifted to you by another adult within that state.

It’s time for Congress to take a look at this issue and pass a law allowing for a free marijuana trade zone within the four contiguous legal states before some unfortunate cannabis consumer becomes the test case for traveling with legal weed from one legal state into another.

The post Can You Travel With Weed Between Legal States? appeared first on Weed News.

You’ve heard the basics from your stoner buddy or your local budtender, depending on whether you’re one of the lucky ones who live where you can shop for marijuana legally.

“Indica means ‘in-da-couch’, man; it’s gonna give you a heavy body high,” she might tell you, “Sativas are more uplifting and heady.”

That’s a gross generalization, though. It’s kind of like saying that sports cars go fast and electric cars save gas. It’s true enough in general, but it doesn’t mean you can’t find a fuel-efficient sports car or a fast electric car. Other details matter.

Indica strains evolved in the hot, dry conditions. Strains like Afghani or Hindu Kush grew short and bushy with wide leaves to better handle low moisture and hot temperatures.

Sativa strains evolved in wetter, cooler conditions. Strains like Panama Red or Thai grew tall and lanky with thin leaves to better respirate in the high humidity.

These kinds of pure indica or sativa strains are called landrace and are very rare to find these days, though. You’re much more likely to find hybrid strains that are cross-bred from indicas and sativas.

And that’s where the confusion begins.

This hybridization happens naturally, when pollen from one strain blows over into another strain, but artificial hybridization is much more common. Just like we bred dogs and horses based on their certain traits to create animals better suited to our needs, we bred cannabis strains to shape their traits to our liking. Sativas take longer to mature, generally, so growers mixed in some indica to speed up the process. Other strains may have been mixed in to increase production volume per plant.

Still, you’ll hear reference to “sativa-dominant” hybrids like Silver Haze or Blue Dream and to “indica dominant” hybrids like Girl Scout Cookies or OG Kush. The former are supposed to give you a lot of the head high with a little bit of the body high; the latter are supposed to be the reverse.

Yet even that’s not going to always be an accurate way to determine the high you’re going to get. How a particular strain is grown can make some difference in how it performs. Harvesting too early or too late, curing too little or too long, changes in soil, water, and lighting – all of these can introduce or suppress certain traits in the plant. That Durban Poison you rely on to be a buzzy sativa high may have been such when it was grown hydroponically under LEDs, but maybe not so much grown outdoors in a low-humidity, high-altitude region.

Much of the reason behind this owes to something called the entourage effect. We all know that delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol – THC – is the molecule in cannabis that provides us our high. Sativa, indica, and hybrid strains all contain THC, so what makes one different from the other?

Well, that’s like noting that cars all have transmissions that when powered turn the wheels to propel it forward. Other parts matter – a gas engine vs an electric motor, a light aerodynamic body vs a heavy bulky body, a NASCAR driver vs grandma behind the wheel, clean dry roadways vs. snow-covered, fog-blanketed ones, and so on.

Likewise, other parts matter in cannabis. Another cannabinoid – cannabidiol or CBD – mitigates the psychoactivity of THC. Thus, your Durban Poison grown in an environment that caused it to produce more CBD will get you less of that heady, buzzy high than you’re expecting.

Cannabis also contains molecules known as terpenes. These are the chemicals that give marijuana its variety of scents and are found in all sorts of plants. They include pinene (you smell that in pine needles), linalool (in lavender), and limonene (in citrus plants), among many others.

One of these terpenes is called myrcene. It’s also found in hops and is more likely the reason you feel couch-lock effects from indicas over sativas. Krymon deCesare, chief research director at Steep Hill Halent Lab in Oakland, “We found consistently elevated levels of the terpenoid myrcene in C. indica, as compared to C. sativa.”

Myrcene, deCesare explains, “is the major ingredient responsible for ‘flipping’ the normal energetic effect of THC into a couch lock effect.” That myrcene in hops backs up the theory. ”Notice the warm, relaxed feeling you get from a couple of hoppy beers?” deCesare asked. “That effect is, to a good extent, due to the myrcene present from the hops.”

Thus, it may not be just the THC/CBD values we look to in the future to judge our cannabis. DeCesare showed how myrcene content below 0.4% didn’t seem to affect THC’s high, but over that amount started to flip it from “heady” to “couch lock”. Soon we’ll have to add myrcene and other terpene content to truly judge our strain purchases.

This is further necessary thanks to recent studies that have shown our consistency in naming our strains leaves a lot to be desired. Last year, researchers in Canada published a study called . They found that in many cases, the supposed variety of cannabis strain wasn’t exactly what it was purported to be:

[A] vernacular taxonomy that distinguishes between “Sativa” and “Indica” strains is widespread in the marijuana community.

[B]reeding has resulted in considerable admixture between the two. While there appears to be a genetic basis for the reported ancestry of many marijuana strains, in some cases the assignment of ancestry strongly disagrees with our genotype data.

For example we found that Jamaican Lambs Bread (100% reported C. sativa) was nearly identical (IBS = 0.98) to a reported 100% C. indica strain from Afghanistan.

We conclude that the genetic identity of a marijuana strain cannot be reliably inferred by its name or by its reported ancestry.

Achieving a practical, accurate and reliable classification system for Cannabis, including a variety registration system for marijuana-type plants, will require significant scientific investment and a legal framework that accepts both licit and illicit forms of this plant. Such a system is essential in order to realize the enormous potential of Cannabis as a multi-use crop (hemp) and as a medicinal plant (marijuana).

In the future, it seems like we’ll pay less attention to the name of our cannabis product and more to the label describing cannabinoid and terpenoid content. It will be like picking your player in a sports video game and judging them by the various ratings of strength, speed, quickness, accuracy, etc. “Budtender, what do you got in a sativa-dominant with THC above 20 percent, myrcene over 1 percent, and some hints of limonene and pinene?”

Well, in a legal state, anyway. For the rest of the country, the question will still just be “What do you got?”

The post What’s The Difference Between Indica And Sativa Marijuana? appeared first on Weed News.