All posts tagged: cannabis

The FDA Approved its First Cannabis Drug. What Next?

June 28, 2018 Mary Jane Blog

Five years ago, I bought a safe for my son’s doctor to store drugs. It was blue, about three feet square, and weighed 965 pounds—like the Acme safes Wile E. Coyote used to try to drop on Road Runner. My family and I had evidence the drugs might cure our 11-year-old son of his relentless seizures. But because the drugs contained a derivative of a cannabis plant known as cannabidiol, or CBD, the drugs had to be handled like they were heroin, or any other so-called Schedule 1 drugs. Every few months when a new shipment arrived, I or my wife Evelyn would appear at UCSF doctor Roberta Cilio’s office door. She’d open the safe, make us sign some papers, and give us Sam’s medicine in a brown paper bag to take home.

The medicine did help our son, and a whole lot more. Sam’s seizures dropped from 100 a day to about five a day—and GW Pharmaceuticals, the manufacturer, was so encouraged by his response that it started talking to epilepsy doctors about clinical trials. On Monday, the Food and Drug Administration approved the drug, now known as Epidiolex, for sale in the US. It will likely be available via prescription at pharmacies in the fall.

Like any new drug, we won’t know whether it lives up to its hype for a while. What’s clear is that it will permanently change the way we talk about cannabis in America. Cannabis is as legal as alcohol in Washington, DC and eight states, including the entire West Coast. But doctors, scientists, and hospital administrators are governed by federal, not state law, which makes studying cannabis a risky, time-consuming endeavor. That’s about to permanently change.

Early evidence suggests CBD could be useful not just for epilepsy, but a broad spectrum of neurological diseases like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, multiple sclerosis, and some brain cancers. “There are neuroscientists who are drooling to work on this,” said Elizabeth Thiele, director of the pediatric epilepsy program at Massachusetts General Hospital and one of the lead investigators in the GW trials. Once the DEA reschedules Epidiolex, they finally will be able to.

The approval also enables GW itself to accelerate its own internal cannabis research. GW is already testing Epidiolex for the treatment of tubular sclerosis, a disease other than epilepsy that often causes seizures. Beyond that, GW now has political capital with US regulators that it plans to use to get approval for Sativex, a THC and CBD mouth spray for cancer pain and multiple sclerosis, which has been available in the UK since 2010 and in other European countries like Germany since 2011. If that product is approved, American scientists will finally have a relatively easy, legal way to test the effects of dosed THC for many disorders.

For the moment, the biggest unknown is how insurance companies will decide to cover Epidiolex. The double blind, placebo-controlled trials required for FDA approval only covered two rare brain-destroying pediatric types of epilepsy—Dravet Syndrome and Lennox Gastaut Syndrome. About 50,000 patients are affected by these two illnesses. But there is already evidence that Epidiolex could help with dozens of different types of seizures and epilepsy syndromes.

Indeed, two-thirds of the 1,756 patients who have tried Epidiolex in the past five years didn’t have Dravet or LGS—including Sam. Demand for Epidiolex was so high among drug-unresponsive patients like Sam that GW allowed neurologists at more than four dozen hospitals that weren’t part of the formal trials to conduct their own so-called open label trials. It helped GW learn more about how Epidiolex worked in a broader population, and it allowed a lot of sick patients to get access to medicine that might help them.

That parallel research should make it easier for doctors to prescribe the drug for other illnesses, a practice known as “prescribing off label.” It just means that in a doctor’s professional opinion a certain drug is worth trying, and it happens a lot with epilepsy drugs, Thiele says.

The reason that pharmaceutical firms focus on rare diseases like Dravet and LGS—at least for seizure drugs—is driven as much by business and bureaucratic considerations as medical ones, doctors and pharmaceutical executives have told me. It’s difficult to get permission to do drug trials in children unless those kids have illnesses like Dravet and LGS. In addition, companies can get FDA approval faster and have patent protection for longer if they develop drugs for rare diseases like Dravet or LGS.

What all this means is that GW will need to ensure that patients already taking Epidiolex for other forms of epilepsy don’t suddenly wake up in the fall and become compelled to pay full price for medications that work for them. It also means that doctors will need to marshal their expertise and the data that already exist.

Thiele says that insurance companies eventually decide to cover epilepsy drugs for many more kinds of seizures than they were originally prescribed. The only question in her mind is how long that will take. The one thing she does know is that the public pressure for insurance companies to cover Epidiolex broadly will be intense. “Every epileptologist I know says that patients have been asking when they can get Epidiolex for a year now,” she adds.

As for Sam, he wants to be a neurologist when he grows up. Two and a half years ago, when we combined Epidiolex with another drug, Sam’s seizures stopped completely. Sam, now 17, has medical permission to drive a car, something along with—well, everything—that seemed impossible to imagine five years ago.

Canada becomes second country to legalise cannabis use

June 27, 2018 Mary Jane Blog

Cannabis Act passes, with the legislation expected to take effect in a few months

Canada is to become the second country in the world to fully legalise marijuana, after the senate approved legislation paving the way for recreational cannabis to be legally bought and sold within the next two or three months.

Weve just witnessed a very historic vote that ends 90 years of prohibition, senator Tony Dean told reporters on Tuesday after the vote to pass the Cannabis Act.

It ends 90 years of needless criminalisation, it ends a prohibition model that inhibited and discouraged public health and community health in favour of just-say-no approaches that simply failed young people miserably.

The federal government has said it would give provinces and territories which are responsible for deciding how recreational cannabis will be distributed and sold eight to 12 weeks after the legislation is passed to get ready for sales, but the exact date that sales begin will be set by the federal government.

Justin Trudeaus Liberal government introduced the legislation last year in a bid to make Canada the second country in the world to legalise cannabis, after Uruguay. Medical marijuana is already legal in Canada.

On Tuesday, the prime minister welcomed the legislation being passed. Its been too easy for our kids to get marijuana – and for criminals to reap the profits, he wrote on Twitter. Today, we change that.

Initially, the government planned to begin retail sales by 1 July, but the timeline was delayed as the senate debated the legislation. Canadas upper chamber voted 52 to 29 on Tuesday to make marijuana fully legal in the country.

Some Conservative MPs and senators voiced their disappointment as the bill passed on Tuesday. Sad day for Canadas kids, senator Linda Frum wrote on Twitter.

Conservative senator Leo Housakos said: When you normalise the use of marijuana and youre a young person and you had certain reservations because of the simple fact that it was illegal, theres, I believe, a propensity to have somebody be more inclined to use it.

Once legalisation goes into effect, Canadians will be able grow up to four plants in their own home and carry up to 30 grams of dried cannabis for personal use. Those caught with more than this amount, or who supply marijuana to minors will face penalties.

Sales of cannabis which analysts estimate could eventually be worth somewhere between C$5bn and C$7bn annually will vary widely across the country. In Alberta, recreational cannabis will be available at more than 200 private retailers while in New Brunswick, the provincial government will operate a chain of stores called Cannabis NB.

The minimum age of consumption will fluctuate between 18 or 19 years depending on the province.

On Tuesday, supporters of the legislation stressed the cautious, prudent approach to the landmark change. What the governments approach has been is, yes, legalisation but also strict control, said Peter Harder, the governments representative in the Senate. That does not in any way suggest that its now party time.

The historic vote comes with its own set of challenges for the government; it has promised it will now explore the idea of clearing the criminal records of the hundreds of thousands of Canadians with past convictions for simple possession and will have to address the concerns of some Indigenous leaders who said they werent adequately consulted on the legislation.

Canadas softer approach to cannabis could also exacerbate the countrys already turbulent relationship with Donald Trumps administration. While nine US states and the District of Columbia have legalised recreational marijuana, the White House has previously suggested that the Department of Justice will do more to enforce federal laws prohibiting recreational marijuana, raising concerns over how Canadas approach will coexist with a potential US crackdown.

Nearly 400,000 people a day cross the border between Canada and the US. Since 2016, Canada has been pushing the US to change a policy that bans Canadians who admit to having used marijuana from travelling to the United States.

Canada’s Trudeau says cannabis will become legal in mid-October

June 25, 2018 Mary Jane Blog

Prime minister says measure will almost completely replace the organised crime market

Marijuana will become fully legal in Canada on 17 October, prime minister Justin Trudeau has said, ushering in a landmark change that he expects will take significant chunk out of profits flowing to organised crime.

Speaking to reporters for the first time since the senate set the stage for Canada to become the first country in the G7 to fully legalise cannabis, Trudeau said: Obviously the current approach the current prohibition of marijuana has not worked to protect our kids, to keep the money out of the pockets of organised crime and thats why were bringing in a new legalised framework around marijuana, he said on Wednesday.

Trudeaus Liberal government introduced legislation last year in a bid to make Canada the second country in the world to legalise cannabis, after Uruguay. Medical marijuana is already legal in Canada.

Trudeau expected that the end of 95 years of prohibition would immediately begin to curtail the estimated C$6bn ($4.5bn) in profits pouring into the black market. And over the following months, and indeed years, we will almost completely replace the organised crime market on that, he said.

Initially the federal government had hoped to launch retail sales by July this year. Trudeau said: One of the things that we heard very clearly from the provinces is that they need a certain amount of time to get their bricks-and-mortar stores and their online sales ready.

Producers need time to be able to actually prepare for a regimented and successful implementation of the regime … This is something that we want to get right.

Once legalisation goes into effect, Canadians will be able grow up to four plants in their home and carry up to 30 grams of dried cannabis for personal use. Theyll be able to prepare edibles at home for personal use and share up to 30 grams between adults. Those caught with more than this amount, or who supply marijuana to minors, will face stiff penalties.

Sales of cannabis will vary widely across the country. In Alberta, recreational cannabis will be available at more than 200 private retailers while in New Brunswick, the provincial government will operate a chain of stores called Cannabis NB.

Many questions remained unanswered, however, such as how police will test motorists suspected of driving under the influence, whether provinces will be able to ban home cultivation and how legalisation will interact with the roughly 400,000 people a day who cross the US-Canada border.

The federal government is also under renewed pressure to pair legalisation with pardons for the hundreds of thousands of Canadians with prior marijuana convictions. On Wednesday Trudeau said it would be illogical to consider the issue before the new law comes into effect.

Weve said that we will look at next steps once the coming-into-force happens but between now and then the current regime stays.

My Son Pioneered an Epilepsy Drug Derived From Marijuana. An FDA Panel Just Approved It

June 24, 2018 Mary Jane Blog

Yesterday morning a tall, lanky 16-year-old boy in a red polo shirt stood at a podium in front of a roomful of doctors, scientists, and regulators and told them about how a drug they were considering for approval had changed his life. “I had seizures for 10 years,” he said. “My parents tell me there were times I had seizures 100 times a day.” Now, he said, he has been seizure free for nearly two and a half years.

“I can understand what goes on at school,” he said. “And I can have adventures that never would have been possible before.” He told them about how seizure freedom enabled him to study to be a Bar Mitzvah in 2016. He told them about a school trip he’d just taken without his parents to South Africa—12,000 miles from home. And he said that he hoped to become a neurologist one day so that he could help other people with epilepsy. The audience, despite being told not to applaud speakers until the end, clapped anyway.

About an hour later, after about a dozen parents of epileptic children spoke of their struggles with the disease, the Food and Drug Administration panel of scientists and doctors voted 13-0 to recommend approval. The FDA is expected to render a final decision on the drug, Epidiolex, by June. One of the panelists John Mendelson, an addiction treatment executive and a UCSF professor said, “This is clearly a breakthrough drug for an awful disease.”

The whole event, which I watched on a live stream from my home office in Berkeley, was one of the thrills of my life. Sam is my son. He and my wife Evelyn both testified because Sam was the first person in the US to take Epidiolex back in December 2012. After trying more than two dozen medications, a crazy sounding diet, and corticosteroids that made Sam look like a cancer patient, Epidiolex—which didn’t even have a name when Sam tried it—was truly our last option to help him.

The author’s son, Sam Vogelstein, testified Thursday in Washington DC before the FDA’s advisory committee.

Evelyn Nussenbaum

I should mention that Epidiolex is derived from cannabis. Its active ingredient is cannabidiol, aka CBD, which is a chemical in the plant that doesn’t make you high.

The manufacturer, GW Pharmaceuticals, knew little about epilepsy back then. But Sam’s response was so extraordinary, their executives decided they needed to learn more about the disease, and quickly embarked on clinical trials. Sam actually tried the medicine in London under a doctor’s supervision. Such a trial in the UK was straightforward, whereas conducting it in the US would have been impossible because of our cannabis laws. Since then nearly 1,800 patients have tried it at US hospitals, with about 40 to 50 percent seeing greater than 50 percent reductions in seizures. That sounds small until you consider that admission to the trials required patients to have exhausted all other medicinal options. Officially, Epidiolex will be approved only to treat two of the most severe types of epilepsy, Dravet and Lennox Gastaut syndromes. But doctors will likely have the flexibility to prescribe it for other epilepsies too. Many epilepsy drugs are prescribed this way, known as off label. (Many patients, including Sam, are on more than one drug.)

The pending approval of Epidiolex isn’t just a big deal for me and my family. It’s a big deal for 3 million people in the US who have epilepsy, and, if approved elsewhere, 73 million people worldwide. Epilepsy affects about one percent of the world’s population, more than Parkinson’s and Multiple Sclerosis combined. And yet for all humanities’ scientific prowess, only about two-thirds of people who take epilepsy medicines become seizure free. The imminent approval of a medication that might shrink the number of unresponsive patients is a major, even historic, development.

It’s also a big deal for cannabis research and by extension the cannabis legalization discussion. Epidiolex will be the first FDA approved drug derived from a cannabis plant. It can’t get anyone high because the manufacturer extracts all the THC during production.

To manufacture CBD, GW maintains tens of thousands of cannabis plants in hothouses all over the UK. It extracts the CBD from the plants in a lab, ending up with a 100 milliliter bottle of strawberry flavored sesame oil that it ships to the US.

A common refrain from cannabis opponents has long been that there is no scientific evidence that anything associated with cannabis can be medicine. And that’s been true because regulators and police worldwide make studying illegal substances like cannabis nearly impossible.

But to get this far in the FDA approval process, GW had to marshal the same scientific evidence of safety and efficacy that every other drug manufacturer must present. It created a medicine that was consistent from dose to dose, bottle to bottle, and batch to batch. It conducted all the required placebo controlled trials, administered by doctors in hospital settings. And those doctors published peer reviewed research in top medical journals like the New England Journal of Medicine. “It’s an honor to be participating in a (cannabis) decision based on science instead of politics," said panelist Mark Green, professor of neurology and anesthesiology at the Icahn School of Medicine in New York, after the vote.

Indeed, it doesn’t require too much imagination to see how Epidiolex’s pending approval forces a public reckoning on how we think about cannabis nationally. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has made no secret of his virulent opposition to the legalization of cannabis in any form. He has said that “good people do not smoke marijuana.” Yet, assuming Epidiolex gets formal FDA approval, he will have to weigh in through his supervision of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

At the moment, CBD is a Schedule 1 drug like cannabis. Its medical use—except in the specially approved trials that proved its effectiveness—is not allowed. The DEA must reschedule it before it can be sold. Technically, the DEA could refuse. But it would have to explain how it—a police agency—was in a better position to make that call than the FDA, an agency of scientists and doctors. An explanation would also be needed for neurologists, and the parents of millions of very sick children. The DEA can’t delay its decision either. By law it must rule within 90 days.

All that maneuvering would be moot, of course, if Congress decides to pass a law legalizing cannabis entirely, as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer proposed last night. He is not the first senator to propose such a law, but he is by far the most influential to do it. “If smoking marijuana doesn’t hurt anybody else, why shouldn’t we allow people to do it and not make it criminal" he told Vice News.

By now you are probably wondering what a family from California like us was thinking when it traveled to the UK to have their kid try a drug derived from a cannabis plant. Remarkably, that’s where you had to go to get pharmaceutical grade CBD back then. We tried to procure it from artisanal producers here for six months. Everything we tried turned out to be ineffective and sometimes fraudulent. Getting the CBD out of cannabis plant is complicated, expensive, and time consuming.

The artisanal CBD market is more robust today. There are some good, reliable preparations that are helping epilepsy patients who could not get into the GW trials. Hopefully they will force GW to keep Epidiolex affordable. But many parents have told me that in a perfect world they'd just go to the pharmacy to treat their kids' seizures. They have complicated lives, but simple needs. They want the same experience they get when they fill a penicillin prescription: a cure.

All of this made yesterday one of the best days in Sam's young life. Other parents thanked him for speaking for all the kids who were too sick to speak for themselves, and he felt like he was part of something bigger than himself. “And when I suggested that we made a good team as speakers," Evelyn said, “he said with a big grin, ‘You set ’em up. And I knock ’em down.’ ”

The future of weed is microdosing. This company is ahead of the game

June 21, 2018 Mary Jane Blog

Pax CEOBharat Vasan and the Pax Era (not to scale), which will now help you microdose.

Image: pax

It’s rare that you find a company that specifically wants to help you use its product less, especially in the marijuana space. But that’s just what vaporizer maker Pax Labs is delivering in an update to its Pax Era device and app Tuesday: the ability to inhale cannabis in truly tiny doses.

This is unusual, because the era of pot prohibition was all about more: growers with limited space competed to give you a bigger and better high, packing their strains of weed with ever greater amounts of THC (and more recently the other major active ingredient, CBD).

In the first flush of pot legalization, this extreme potency trend continued. Edibles were enormously strong (as columnist Maureen Dowd famously discovered to her chagrin), and the fashionable thing among some stoners was “dabbing” — superheating concentrated cannabinoid oil for a fast, insanely strong high.

But with legalization spreading rapidly across the country — just yesterday, New York state got behind it — times have changed. The frontier of middle-class consumerism has opened up. Stressed suburban moms and busy executives are the new target audience, not stoners with high tolerance levels.

Microdosing has been a thing for some time; it’s also an increasingly popular therapeutic way to take LSD. But when it comes to marijuana, establishing what doctors call the minimal effective dose has involved experimenting with tinctures or taking tiny amounts of edibles — not necessarily something a newbie has the patience or the gumption to do.

Enter the Pax Era. Launched in late 2016, this $30 flash drive-sized vape uses concentrate-filled “pods” made by third parties (more than 250 kinds of pod are now available at dispensaries across the U.S.). If it looks just like the popular nicotine vape called the Juul, that’s because Pax Labs was spun off from the company that became Juul in 2017.

Pax has been busy post-Juul. It brought on a new CEO, Bharat Vasan: steeped in Silicon Valley, Vasan was an executive at Electronic Arts, then co-founded a wearable device company that was bought by Intel for $100 million, then sold a smart lock and doorbell company before Pax came calling. The Era’s new microdosing ability comes via an update to its Bluetooth-linked app (iOS or Android) called Session Control. It marks Vasan’s first major impact on Pax’s direction.

“Session Control make the vaping experience more predictable for people, especially those who are new to cannabis,” says Vasan. He and Jesse Silver, who is both Pax Labs’ VP of product and a prolific Burning Man artist, gave me an advance look at how it works.

Up until now, the Pax app has allowed you to set the temperature of the vapor, allowing either for more subtle flavor or larger clouds from the Era. If that’s the horizontal axis (literally, on the app) Vasan and Silver see Session Control as the vertical axis controlling how much you get.

Turn the feature on and you have the options of micro, small, medium or large doses. A bar appears on the screen. Once you fill the bar with green by inhaling on the Pax Era, you’re done — or rather, you’re locked out of using the device for 30 seconds.

Of course, you can just keep hitting the Pax again after 30 seconds if you want to defeat the purpose. (Or, if you’re not in the app, take the pod out and put it back in to disable Session Control.) But for those who are actively seeking moderation, or looking to eke out the contents of those expensive Pax Pods (which sell for anywhere between $30 and $100, depending on the strain), it’s an excellent constraint.

The microdose is truly micro, and provides probably the most discreet, extremely low-level buzz you’ll ever feel. You could probably take a hit in the middle of a meeting and no one would notice. (Not that we’re recommending that.)

How did Pax decide what a micro hit was? Technically, it’s all about the number of joules (not Juuls) of energy applied to the Pod by the Pax’s USB-chargeable battery. This is why you shouldn’t expect to see Session Control on Pax’s larger and more expensive vaporizer for cannabis flower, the $200 Pax 3; it’s harder to control the amount of energy provided to the Pax 3’s oven. That thing gets so hot, you can get high from it immediately after it’s turned off.

But how did Pax decide how many joules were necessary? With the help of feedback from a large and enthusiastic beta testing community. This kind of feedback will determine where the company will go with Session Control technology in the future — possibly providing an “Extra Large” option, Vasan suggested, or an even more micro microdose. Or maybe allowing users with poor impulse control to change the amount of time they’re locked out of the device.

Regardless, it’s an intriguing strategy that helps Pax in its goal to become what Vasan calls the iPhone of vaporizers: it just works, however you want it to work. Technically, encouraging people to use the product less (or in smaller doses) doesn’t affect Pax Labs’ bottom line, since the Pods are all filled by third parties. Pax just makes empty Pods and licenses their use.

And if more people have a better, low level, more manageable experience while vaping weed, perhaps they’ll become long-term customers. And perhaps they’ll sample more Pax Pods now that they can effectively sip them. In this, as in so many other areas of consumption, less is more.

WATCH: We spoke with a medical professional to clear up some misconceptions about cannabis

Canada closer to legalising marijuana after senate vote in favour

June 13, 2018 Mary Jane Blog

The countrys upper chamber votes for legislation aimed at ending more than 90 years of prohibition, but with dozens of amendments

Canadas senate has voted to legalise recreational marijuana, clearing a major hurdle as the country moves towards becoming the first in the G7 to fully legalise the drug.

The countrys upper chamber voted 56-30 on Thursday in favour of legislation aimed at ending more than 90 years of prohibition. The senate, however, added nearly four dozen amendments, meaning the legislation will now return to the House of Commons for consideration.

The federal Liberal government, led by Justin Trudeau, introduced the legislation last year in a bid to make Canada the second country in the world to legalise the cannabis, after Uruguay. Medical marijuana is already legal in Canada.

The legislation divided the responsibilities between the federal and provincial governments, with Ottawa responsible for regulating production while leaving it to provinces and territories to decide how the drug will be distributed and sold.

Once passed and implemented, those who want to grow their own marijuana will be limited to four plants per household. Canadians will be allowed to carry up to 30 grams of dried cannabis for personal use while those who sell or give marijuana to minors or who drive under its influence will face stiff penalties.

Since becoming the Liberal leader in 2013, Trudeau has argued that the decriminalisation and regulation of marijuana would help keep the drug away from children and ensure profits dont end up in the hands of what he described as criminal elements.

While the sale of recreational marijuana is not expected to begin until August or September, the senate vote was one of the major obstacles standing in the way of legalisation as Conservatives senators sought to block the initiative.

The many amendments added by the senate and which will now be considered by MPs reflect some of this opposition, such as tighter restrictions on advertising by cannabis companies and allowing provinces to prohibit home cultivation.

I served 20 years for cannabis. Now the police are cashing in on it | Rosie Rowbotham

June 13, 2018 Mary Jane Blog

The same authorities who hounded dealers are now investors in cannabis and theres still no amnesty for past convictions. The hypocrisy is staggering, says Rosie Rowbotham, a former producer at CBC Radio

Over the course of my life, I have been convicted in four separate trials, sentenced to a total of 69 years in prison, and after many appeals served just over 20 of them the first two in maximum security. I was finally released on parole in 1997.

Given the length of time I was incarcerated, you might be thinking that I was involved in hard drugs or violence. After all, some murderers do less time than I did.

But my crime? Conspiracy to import, possess and sell cannabis.

I brought in tons of hash from the Middle East and tons of pot from Jamaica, Mexico and Colombia. Torontos infamous Rochdale College was my home base. After my first trial, I told the judge: Im going to do it again and I did but I can assure you I never got involved with any harder drugs, let alone anything violent. I was strictly a pot guy: a hippy capitalist from Belleville, Ontario, who wanted as big a piece of the North American market as he could get.

In jail, I saw myself as a prisoner of the war on drugs one of the thousands of others who lost part of their future in the long, cruel and ultimately futile attempt to stop people from buying, selling and smoking weed.

Norman Mailer testified on my behalf at my first trial, Neil Young at my second. Young told the court that he took exception to the prevailing stereotype of deadbeat pot smokers who could never make a positive contribution to society, pointing out that he was a prodigious toker and yet he still likely paid more taxes than everyone else in the court room combined.

Now a new day is dawning in Canada or so it seems. Possession of pot for recreational use is about to be legalized. Canadians will be able to possess up to 30 grams, buy it, share it, put it into edibles and grow a few plants.

To be honest, Ive never considered myself to be a marijuana activist. I wasnt a campaigner for legalization: I was making big money, and legalization would have been bad for my business.

I also dont trust or respect politicians, especially when it comes to pot. In 1969, the prime minister, Pierre Trudeau, set up the LeDain Commission to study the pot scene in Canada. After hearing from thousands of Canadians, the report recommended cannabis possession be legalized. I was 18 at the time, a pot smoker and hopeful. Nothing happened.

Fifty years later, however, the war on pot is finally over, and my side has won. So why am I not celebrating?

Lets start with the movement to grant amnesty to people with past cannabis convictions. Im glad that the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, has said he plans to move forward in a thoughtful way on fixing past wrongs that happened because of this erroneous law.

If the law is so erroneous, however, why is his government continuing to bust people for possession? In 2016, more than 17,000 Canadians were charged with a law that will soon disappear. Offering them amnesty would be a nice gesture, but the damage will have already been done. Why charge them in the first place?

A simple amnesty from the Canadian government is not enough. Photograph: Simon Webster/Rex Shutterstock

Fantino — A simple amnesty from the Canadian government is not enough. Photograph: Simon Webster/Rex Shutterstock

All eyes on Canada as first G7 nation prepares to make marijuana legal

June 10, 2018 Mary Jane Blog

From crime to health to business, Canadas decision to legalize marijuana is a grand progressive experiment that promises to answer a host of questions

When Canopy Growth opened its first cannabis factory in an old chocolate plant near Ottawa four years ago, it did so predicting a bright future. Canada had already legalized medical marijuana, and Canopy predicted full legalization for recreational use to be next.

What the company hadnt predicted, however, was the sudden flood of foreign visitors. Politicians and police authorities from Jamaica, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Greece and Australia have all come knocking, as well as doctors from New Zealand, Brazil and Chile, along with groups of corporate investors and bankers so many that Canopy now sometimes splits up the groups according to their birthdays.

We knew wed have to give a lot of tours, so we just cut a window into the wall, said the company spokesman, Jordan Sinclair. We put windows in all of the doors.

Canada will be thrust even more directly under the international microscope on Thursday, when a vote in the Senate is expected to ratify Bill C-45, effectively making Canada the first G20 nation to legalize recreational marijuana.

Its going to be a bit of a science fiction experience for a while, said Benedikt Fischer, an expert on substance use at Torontos biggest psychiatric hospital. Its unique in the world, because its happening for the first time in a wealthy country. Its not like in the US, where there are these state experiments. Most people kind of ignore Uruguay. And so the world is really looking at this.

Governments, researchers and business leaders around the world all have their own reasons for keeping tabs. Legalization could affect Canadas crime patterns, health and countless other factors but exactly how, no one yet knows.

Each Canadian province plans to roll out its newly legalized market in a slightly different way, creating about a dozen mini-laboratories within one massive test case.

Even places that have already taken the legalization plunge are hoping Canada will solve some mysteries. After Colorado legalized marijuana five years ago, for example, organized crime reacted by ramping up supplies of black tar heroin, opiates and harder drugs, said Dr Larry Wolk, the states top public health official.

But Wolk says he is interested to watch that process unfold on a bigger scale in Canada, where the new law is expected to deal a much more significant blow to the black market. Any new mix of illicit drugs in the country could have new effects on public health.

Whats the impact of marijuana legalization on the opioid crisis? he asked as an example. Does it actually act as a substitute so that people can get off opiates for chronic pain? Is there a positive impact? Or is it a negative impact, because as a result theres more opiates in the black market? Is [pot] a gateway? We dont really have an answer.

One delicate balance for Canadian authorities has been guessing at what kind of pricing will be low enough to eradicate illicit sales yet not so low as to entice new users. Canadas finance minister, Bill Morneau, recently said the goal is keeping cannabis out of the hands of kids and out of the black market. That means keeping the taxes low so we can actually get rid of the criminals in the system.

One sign of success will be if Canada not only discourages underground sales, but converts illicit sellers to the new system, said Tim Boekhout van Solinge, a Dutch criminologist.

What I am mainly following is who will be the new legal growers, and whether authorities manage to get some of the illegal growers to become legal growers, he said.

Opioids prescribed less in states where medical marijuana legal, studies find

June 10, 2018 Mary Jane Blog

Two new studies have found a correlation using data from programs used by millions of older, poor and disabled Americans

The number of opioid prescriptions for the elderly and the poor declined in states where medical marijuana is legal, two new studies have found.

In one study, researchers at the University of Georgia, Athens, used data from Medicare Part D, a government-run prescription drug program for people older than 65.

They found prescriptions filled for all opioids decreased by 2.11m daily doses a year when a state legalized medical marijuana, and by 3.7m daily doses a year when marijuana dispensaries opened. Forty-one million Americans use Medicare Part D. The study analyzed data between 2010 and 2015.

In a second study, researchers at the University of Kentucky examined opioid prescription data from Medicaid, a government-run program for the poor and disabled. More than 74 million Americans use Medicaid.

That analysis found state medical marijuana laws were associated with a 5.8% lower rate of opioid prescribing, and states with recreational marijuana laws were associated with a 6.3% lower rate of opioid prescribing. That study used data from 2011 to 2016.

Both studies were published in Journal of the American Medical Association Internal Medicine.

The findings are likely to bolster legal marijuana advocates, who have long contended legal marijuana could curb the opioid epidemic.

Americas overdose crisis has claimed more lives each year since the early 2000s, when powerful opioid painkillers such as Oxycontin were aggressively marketed. In 2016, more than 64,000 people died of an overdose.

In a JAMA opinion piece accompanying the research, Drs Kevin Hill from Harvard and Andrew Saxon from the veterans affairs health system wrote that the research supports anecdotal evidence from patients who describe a decreased need for opioids to treat chronic pain after initiation of medical cannabis pharmacotherapy.

Marijuanas effect on opioid use remains contested. Researchers at the National Institute on Drug Abuse found illicit marijuana use was associated with increased illicit opioid use. That study used data from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions, which has produced analyses skeptical of the benefits of liberalizing marijuana.

Meanwhile, a 2014 JAMA Internal Medicine study would seem to support the new findings. That study found states with medical marijuana laws had higher overdose rates, but that those rates declined in years after medical marijuana laws were implemented, with an average 24.8% decline.

The Trump administration made curbing the epidemic a major public health target. Most efforts focus on criminal prosecutions of drug dealers, including emphasizing the death penalty and civil litigation.

The attorney general, Jeff Sessions, opposes efforts to liberalize marijuana access, and claimed marijuana fueled the overdose epidemic.

No new money has been allocated to the crisis since Trump took office. Further, Republican proposals for cuts to Medicaid would have disproportionately affected people in addiction treatment. Experts believe serious efforts to curb the epidemic will cost billions and will need to address bottlenecks in mental health infrastructure.

Both studies have limitations. First, the opioid crisis has touched every state in America, but there are regional variations. And marijuana laws vary significantly.

People who rely on Medicaid or Medicare Part D are generally poor, disabled and elderly, meaning the findings may not apply to the population in general. Further, it is unclear whether people avoided opioids when medical marijuana was available.

Many companies and states (via taxes) are profiting from the cannabis industry while failing to support research at the level necessary to advance the science, wrote Hill and Saxon.

This situation has to change to get definitive answers on the possible role for cannabis in the opioid crisis, as well as the other potential harms and benefits of legalizing cannabis.

What is CBD? The ‘miracle’ cannabis compound that doesn’t get you high

May 29, 2018 Mary Jane Blog

The cannabis-derived chemical is non-psychoactive, and while federally illegal has been hailed as a cure for disease

In early May, a federal court declined to protect cannabidiol (CBD), a chemical produced by the cannabis plant, from federal law enforcement, despite widespread belief in its medical value.

The ruling was contrary to existing evidence, which suggests the chemical is safe and could have multiple important uses as medicine. Many cannabis advocates consider it a miracle medicine, capable of relieving conditions as disparate as depression, arthritis and diabetes.

The perception of its widespread medical benefits have made the chemical a rallying cry for legalization advocates.

The first thing to know about CBD is that it is not psychoactive; it doesnt get people high. The primary psychoactive ingredient in marijuana is tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). But THC is only one of the scores of chemicals known as cannabinoids produced by the cannabis plant.

So far, CBD is the most promising compound from both a marketing and a medical perspective. Many users believe it helps them relax, despite it not being psychoactive, and some believe regular doses help stave off Alzheimers and heart disease.

While studies have shown CBD to have anti-inflammatory, anti-pain and anti-psychotic properties, it has seen only minimal testing in human clinical trials, where scientists determine what a drug does, how much patients should take, its side effects and so on.

Despite the government ruling, CBD is widely available over the counter in dispensaries in states where marijuana is legal.

CBD first came to public attention in a 2013 CNN documentary called Weed. The piece, reported by Dr Sanjay Gupta, featured a little girl in Colorado named Charlotte, who had a rare life-threatening form of epilepsy called Dravet syndrome.

At age five, Charlotte suffered 300 grand mal seizures a week, and was constantly on the brink of a medical emergency. Through online research, Charlottes desperate parents heard of treating Dravet with CBD. It was controversial to pursue medical marijuana for such a young patient, but when they gave Charlotte oil extracted from high-CBD cannabis, her seizures stopped almost completely. In honor of her progress, high-CBD cannabis is sometimes known as Charlottes Web.