Pubdate: Thu, 07 Jan 2016
Source: Sacramento News & Review (CA)
Column: The 420
Copyright: 2016 Chico Community Publishing, Inc.
Contact:  http://newsreview.com/sacto/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/540
Author: Ngaio Bealum

POT AND THE SLEEPING BRAIN

I have decided to stop using marijuana for various reasons, but I am 
having a hard time falling asleep at night. What can I do?

- -Wyatt E. Wake

Habits are a hard thing to break. It's funny, when I stop using 
cannabis (Hush. I have gone without cannabis for days at a time in 
some small Idaho towns.) I generally don't have a hard time falling 
asleep but I do have crazy-vivid and funky dreams. Everyone is 
different. I looked it up online and all the advice seems to be the 
same: Exercise a little more during the day, don't look at electronic 
media while you are in bed, read a book, do some breathing exercises, 
yadda yadda yadda. Eventually your body will get used to the new 
paradigm and you shouldn't have any problem. Good luck and enjoy your 
vivid dreams!

I hear the DEA is making it easier for scientists to study marijuana. 
Is this true?

- -Sy N. Tiffick

Kinda. The Drug Enforcement Administration is making it easier for 
scientists to study CBD (cannabidiol, one of the hundreds of 
compounds in the cannabis plant). The new rules from the DEA allow 
scientists to skip a step or two when they need to get more CBD for 
research, but doesn't affect studies on THC or other compounds. 
Remember, cannabis is still listed as a Schedule I drug, meaning it 
has "no medicinal value" and a "high likelihood for addiction and abuse." Ha!

But seriously, maybe the DEA is starting to come around. The Food and 
Drug Administration recently sent a letter to the DEA recommending 
that cannabis be rescheduled, and while I have no faith in the DEA's 
ability to get anything right-it took them five years to deny the 
last request for rescheduling, and they have kept marijuana listed as 
a Schedule I drug in spite of a 1988 ruling from a DEA administrative 
law judge calling cannabis "one of the safest therapeutically active 
substances known to man"-I still hold hope that Obama will issue an 
executive order removing cannabis from the drug schedule altogether. 
Yes, he can do that. And if he doesn't and marijuana wins big in the 
2016 elections, the next president will probably have to do 
something. Vote for weed, you guys.

I want to legalize weed in California, but I hate the Adult Use of 
Marijuana Act. What can I do?

- -Jeff

This is what's up: It costs at least $10 million to run an initiative 
campaign in California. The AUMA has Facebook billionaire Sean 
Parker's promise of around $20 million. Do you have the money to run 
a campaign? Everyone wants to hate, but no one wants to put up any 
money. If all the growers and sellers and advocates were to chip in 
and raise even $5 million toward a good law, we could get something 
going. This is one of those "put up or shut up" type of deals, I think.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom