Authorities from seven states, the District of Columbia and some major U.S. cities are backing a Philadelphia effort to open a supervised drug-injection site, which the federal government is trying to stop in court. Safehouse, a nonprofit in Philadelphia, seeks to open a site where people can use drugs in a safe and sanitary environment with help to avoid overdose fatalities. Federal prosecutors sued the nonprofit in February, arguing it would violate federal law by creating a place for people to use illegal drugs such as heroin and bootleg fentanyl. [continues 415 words]
A law that took effect July 1 legalized hemp and CBD products containing traces of THC, the compound in marijuana that gets you high. But field tests and crime labs haven't caught up. Texas hemp enterpreneur Zachary Miller, interviewed here by a television reporter, was arrested in Okaloosa County after products found in his car tested positive for THC. THC is illegal in Florida unless prescribed by a doctor for medical use but trace amounts are allowed in now-legal hemp products. [Courtesy of Zachary Miller] [continues 1525 words]
Humphrey Bogart had a way with life's little vices. When he bought you a drink, the critic Kenneth Tynan recalled, he wouldn't just pass it across - "he'd take me by the wrist and screw the glass into my hand as if it was a lamp socket." Bogart's manner with a cigarette was so vivid that his surname became an admonishing hippie-era verb: "Don't bogart that joint." I've tried repeatedly, over the course of my life, to become a druggie. It's never taken. But even I know what it means to bogart something: to hoard it, to refuse to share. It wasn't until I read Lizzie Post's helpful and inquisitive new book, "Higher Etiquette: A Guide to the World of Cannabis, From Dispensaries to Dinner Parties," however, that I fully understood the term's provenance. [continues 953 words]
SAN MIGUEL AMOLTEPEC VIEJO, Mexico - For years, two young brothers, like many other farmers in their poor, mountainous region of southwest Mexico, found salvation in the opium poppy. They bled the milky latex from its pods and the profits made their hard lives a little easier. The fact that this substance was the raw material for most of the heroin consumed in the United States was of little concern to the family, if they even knew it at all. But then changes in that distant market for illegal drugs made the price of the dried opium latex plummet. [continues 1405 words]
Kush. Bud. Herb. Who knows what to call marijuana these days? Born of the need for secrecy, slang has long dominated pot culture. But as entrepreneurs seek to capitalize on new laws legalizing recreational and medical marijuana, they too are grappling with what to call it. Heading to the dispensary to buy a few nugs or dabs? Marketers seeking to exploit the $10 billion market would prefer that you just called it cannabis. Shirley Halperin, an author of 2007's "Pot Culture: The A-Z Guide to Stoner Language and Life," has seen the shift in recent years. Not long ago, she met with an executive to talk about his company's products. "He physically winced when I said the word 'pot,'" she recalled. "Businesses don't want to call it 'weed.'" [continues 1123 words]
Alex Berenson's allegation that public support for marijuana law reform is waning ("Marijuana Activists Pass Their High Point," op-ed, June 26) is nothing short of a pipe dream. Nearly one in four Americans reside in a jurisdiction where the adult use of cannabis is legal, and 33 states regulate medical marijuana access by statute. No state has ever repealed a marijuana legalization law, and two-thirds of adults-including majorities of self-identified Democrats, Republicans and independents-endorse making the plant legal, according to the latest Gallup poll. As more states amend their cannabis laws, public support for legalization continues to rise. [continues 190 words]
DENVER - Serenity Christensen, 14, is too young to set foot in one of Colorado's many marijuana shops, but she was able to spot a business opportunity in legal weed. She is a Girl Scout, and this year, she and her mother decided to sell their cookies outside a dispensary. "Good business," Serenity said. But on the other side of Denver, legalization has turned another high school student, David Perez, against the warehouselike marijuana cultivations now clustered around his neighborhood. He said their skunky aroma often smacks him in the face when he walks out his front door. [continues 2319 words]
It is wise to know where your cannabis comes from. Intoxicated by bullish demand forecasts, pot investors aren't paying nearly enough attention to supply. U.S. states currently decide whether to legalize cannabis within their own borders, even though the drug remains illegal at the federal level. It is a misnomer to speak of a single U.S. pot industry, considering the patchwork of self-contained cannabis economies across the country. Pot can't cross state lines today, even between two states where the drug is allowed. Should federal laws change, high-cost growers and areas with less favorable climates for cannabis growing will be undercut. [continues 518 words]
A landmark battle in the war on drugs ended Tuesday, and a new approach to address racial inequities began, as Gov. J.B. Pritzker acted to legalize marijuana in Illinois effective Jan. 1, 2020. Sponsors called the change "historic" as Pritzker signed into law a bill that will allow Illinois residents 21 and over to possess up to 30 grams of cannabis flower, 5 grams of concentrate and 500 milligrams of THC infused in edibles and other products. Out-of-state visitors may have up to half those amounts. [continues 1023 words]
Marking a historic moment in an expanding national movement, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker has signed legislation that makes recreational marijuana legal in Illinois. After debate in Springfield earlier this year - during which one lawmaker even cracked eggs into a frying pan to depict the "brain on drugs" - the bill allowing possession and sales to begin on Jan. 1 was approved by the House and Senate. Illinois became the 11th state to legalize cannabis and the first state in which a legislature approved commercial sales. Vermont lawmakers legalized possession, but not yet commercial sales. Approval in other states came via referendum. [continues 609 words]
This was supposed to be the year full cannabis legalization in the U.S. moved much closer to being a reality. Instead it has been a disaster for advocates. Although Illinois legalized recreational use on the final day of its legislative schedule, a half-dozen other deep-blue states that were expected to legalize failed to follow-including New York. Advocates want to believe legalization on their terms, with few restrictions on marketing and age limits potentially as low as 18, remains inevitable. Polls show that between 62% and 66% of Americans support legalization. But cannabis supporters are wrong, and the pushback against marijuana has only begun. [continues 778 words]
The two young women see themselves in Rue, the stumbling, manipulative teenage drug addict that Zendaya plays in "Euphoria," the new HBO show. They see themselves in Rue when she coughs and flushes the toilet so her mom won't hear her rummaging through the medicine cabinet for Xanax. They see themselves when Rue cops clean urine from a high school friend to pass a drug test. They see themselves when Rue convinces a new friend that getting high first thing in the morning is a good idea; when she threatens her mother with a piece of broken glass; when she aspirates her own vomit after overdosing. They see themselves in Rue's pain, her messiness, her unslakable need to obliterate all the bad feelings, no matter the cost. [continues 1290 words]
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. -- Illinois' new governor delivered on a top campaign promise Tuesday by signing legislation making the state the 11th to approve marijuana for recreational use in a program offering legal remedies and economic benefits to minorities whose lives critics say were damaged by a wayward war on drugs. Legalization in Illinois also means that nearly 800,000 people with criminal records for purchasing or possessing 30 grams of marijuana or less may have those records expunged, a provision minority lawmakers and interest groups demanded. It also gives cannabis-vendor preference to minority owners and promises 25% of tax revenue from marijuana sales to redevelop impoverished communities. [continues 742 words]
VICTORIA - B.C.'s largest First Nation is accusing the provincial government of stalling its application for a retail cannabis licence while it races to open its own public store in the community's prime retail location. The Cowichan Tribes on Vancouver Island are in the sixth month of trying to get approval for two retail store licences from the provincial government. As the Cowichan wrestle with a wall of red tape, and are repeatedly rejected for nation-to-nation talks with the province, the B.C. government is competing against the First Nation for the municipal rights to open a store in the community's largest shopping centre. [continues 715 words]
If you've got the munchies for cannabis edibles, you'll have to go to the liquor store. The province has tapped the Nova Scotia Liquor Corp. - which already sells dried and fresh cannabis, cannabis oil and cannabis accessories - - to sell edibles, extracts and topicals. "The NSLC has done a good job in preparing and implementing our new retail model as recreational cannabis was legalized across Canada," said Karen Casey, the minister responsible for the NSLC, in a news release Monday. [continues 244 words]
Recent efforts to legalize marijuana in New York and New Jersey have been stalled - but not killed - by disputes over how exactly to divvy up the revenues from marijuana sales and by worries about drugged driving. Those are both important issues. But another concern should be at the center of this debate: the medical implications of legalizing marijuana, particularly for young people. It's tempting to think marijuana is a harmless substance that poses no threat to teens and young adults. The medical facts, however, reveal a different reality. [continues 495 words]
TORONTO - Adam Ash, 37, wasn't the least bit shy in explaining why he was at the Hunny Pot Cannabis Co., a four-story boutique on Queen Street West in the middle of the city's downtown district. "Marijuana," the Toronto resident said midday on a recent Monday, a little bewildered as to why someone would even bother asking. Glass containers of marijuana flower were laid out on tables throughout the shop, amid glass cases of rolling papers, pipes, bongs, grinders and vaporizers. Employees known as "bud tenders" worked the floors, ready to provide advice and recommendations for picking just the right strain. [continues 803 words]
In the next few weeks, Nicholas DiPatrizio's lab at UC Riverside will receive a shipment of marijuana. DiPatrizio, a professor of biomedical sciences, then will begin giving mice precise doses of cannabis oil to see how marijuana impacts their weight and a host of serious health conditions often linked to obesity. The study marks the first time UC Riverside has received federal approval to conduct research on marijuana -- or any other substance in the Drug Enforcement Administration's strict Schedule I category. It also marks the school's first cannabis-related grant, with $744,000 from tobacco taxes being used to finance this three-year research project on how marijuana affects metabolic health. [continues 1049 words]
Re "Marijuana Damages Young Brains," by Kenneth L. Davis and Mary Jeanne Kreek (Op-Ed, June 17): No one is advocating that young people either consume or have ready access to cannabis. In fact, it is precisely because marijuana use may pose potential risks to certain consumers - for example, adolescents or people with a family history of psychiatric illness - that NORML believes that lawmakers should regulate it accordingly. These regulations should include age restrictions, prohibitions on the unlicensed commercial production or retail sale of the plant and rational limits with regard to product marketing. [continues 90 words]
ALBANY - New York's plan to legalize marijuana this year collapsed on Wednesday, dashing hopes for a potential billion-dollar industry that supporters said would create jobs in minority communities and end decades of racially disproportionate policing. Democratic lawmakers had been in a headlong race to finalize an agreement before the end of the legislative session this week. But persistent disagreement about how to regulate the industry, as well as hesitation from moderate lawmakers, proved insurmountable. "It is clear now that M.R.T.A. is not going to pass this session," Senator Liz Krueger of Manhattan said in a statement on Wednesday morning, using an acronym for the legalization bill she had sponsored. "We came very close to crossing the finish line, but we ran out of time." [continues 806 words]
An association between weed and the dead turns out to have been established long before the 1960s and far beyond a certain ur-band's stomping grounds in San Francisco. Researchers have identified strains of cannabis burned in mortuary rituals as early as 500 B.C., deep in the Pamir mountains in western China, according to a new study published Wednesday. The residue had chemical signatures indicating high levels of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the plant's most psychoactive, or mood-altering, compound. [continues 1030 words]
It can seem as though everyone in Silicon Valley is either heading to or coming back from a psychedelic trip, and it is probably Michael Pollan's fault. He did after all write a best seller, "How to Change Your Mind," about how healthful psychedelics can be. His neighbor Ayelet Waldman, whose memoir "A Really Good Day" recounts how taking acid helped her mood and marriage, has something to do with it, too. And now, inspired by Pollan, the writer T.C. Boyle has a new novel, "Outside Looking In," about Timothy Leary, the charismatic Harvard professor turned psychedelics pied piper of the 1960s. [continues 1164 words]
A new study shoots down the notion that medical marijuana laws can prevent opioid overdose deaths, challenging a favorite talking point of legal pot advocates. Researchers repeated an analysis that sparked excitement years ago. The previous work linked medical marijuana laws to slower than expected increases in state prescription opioid death rates from 1999 to 2010. The original authors speculated patients might be substituting marijuana for painkillers, but they warned against drawing conclusions. Still, states ravaged by painkiller overdose deaths began to rethink marijuana, leading several to legalize pot for medical use. [continues 409 words]
MINFORD, Ohio - Inside an elementary school classroom decorated with colorful floor mats, art supplies and building blocks, a little boy named Riley talked quietly with a teacher about how he had watched his mother take "knockout pills" and had seen his father shoot up "a thousand times." Riley, who is 9 years old, described how he had often been left alone to care for his baby brother while his parents were somewhere else getting high. Beginning when he was about 5, he would heat up meals of fries, chicken nuggets and spaghetti rings in the microwave for himself and his brother, he said. "That was all I knew how to make," Riley said. [continues 1851 words]
Planet 13 in Las Vegas has attracted international attention since it opened perhaps the world's biggest marijuana store last fall, with 3,000 people shopping each day for newly legal cannabis products while surrounded by light shows and interactive art displays that feel natural a few miles off The Strip. Now Planet 13 has announced that its second location - and likely the largest cannabis shop in California - will open early next year. And since it's being billed as the "Disneyland of dispensaries," it's fitting that it's opening just six miles from the theme park, in an industrial stretch of Santa Ana. [continues 734 words]
New data about the effects of the First Step Act, a bipartisan prison reform bill that President Trump signed into law in December, is showing that past injustices can be corrected, even in the most politically polarized of times. Last week, the United States Sentencing Commission, an independent agency that advises federal judges on carrying out changes to sentencing policy, reported that in the four months after the law went into effect, more than 1,000 federal inmates were granted a sentence reduction for offenses involving crack cocaine. In 2010, Congress passed legislation to address these racially unjust sentences, but that change wasn't retroactive. [continues 448 words]
New trials have shown the drug psilocybin to be highly effective in treating depression, with Oakland the latest US city to in effect decriminalise it last week. Some researchers say it could become 'indefensible' to ignore the evidence - but how would it work as a reliable treatment? Lying on a bed in London's Hammersmith hospital ingesting capsules of psilocybin, the active ingredient of magic mushrooms, Michael had little idea what would happen next. The 56-year-old part-time website developer from County Durham in northern England had battled depression for 30 years and had tried talking therapies and many types of antidepressant with no success. His mother's death from cancer, followed by a friend's suicide, had left him at one of his lowest points yet. Searching online to see if mushrooms sprouting in his yard were the hallucinogenic variety, he had come across a pioneering medical trial at Imperial College London. [continues 2146 words]
The Oakland City Council passed a resolution Tuesday night that decriminalizes certain natural psychedelics, including mushrooms, a move that makes Oakland the second city in the nation to do so. The resolution instructs law enforcement to stop investigating and prosecuting people using the drugs. It applies to psychedelics that come from plants or fungi, not synthetic drugs like LSD or MDMA, also known as ecstasy. After the vote, nearly 100 supporters rose from their chairs, clapped and cheered loudly. "I don't have words, I could cry," said Nicolle Greenheart, the co-founder of Decriminalize Nature Oakland. "I'm thrilled. I'm glad that our communities will now have access to the healing medicines and we can start working on healing our communities." [continues 459 words]
NEW YORK - Roky Erickson, the blue-eyed, dark-haired Texan who headed the Austin-based 13th Floor Elevators, a pioneering psychedelic rock band in the 1960s that scored with "You're Gonna Miss Me," has died. He was 71. Erickson's sinuous lead guitar and wailing vocals didn't turn him into a chart topper, but they cemented his role as a musician's musician. Fans included everyone from Lenny Kaye and the Swedish metal group Ghost - who covered his "If You Have Ghosts" - to ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons. [continues 225 words]
UCSF psychiatrist Brian Anderson is studying an experimental therapy to help long-term AIDS survivors - people who were infected with HIV in the 1980s and never expected to live this long - who are feeling sad and demoralized. In a clinic outfitted with a comfortable couch, soft lighting, throw pillows and blankets, the participants of his study are given psilocybin, the hallucinogenic compound found in magic mushrooms. They lie down for a few hours, a mask over their eyes and soothing music playing in the background, and experience a psychedelic trip. [continues 1514 words]
The 2011 Supreme Court of Canada ruling on Vancouver's Insite clinic clearly established 1) that supervised consumption sites are part of health-care services that should be made accessible to people who use drugs, 2) that these sites contribute to reducing the harms associated with drug use, and 3) that denying access to these sites increases the risk of death and disease. In addition to saving lives every day, these sites act as an essential point of contact for people to access much-needed health-care services that have been proven effective to reduce overdoses, blood-borne infections (hepatitis C and HIV), infections (i.e., skin, soft tissue, heart and blood infections) and other medical complications. They also help connect people who use drugs with social services and support to address housing and food insecurity, mental health issues, trauma and isolation. [continues 595 words]
Dr. James S. Ketchum, an Army psychiatrist who in the 1960s conducted experiments with LSD and other powerful hallucinogens using volunteer soldiers as test subjects in secret research on chemical agents that might incapacitate the minds of battlefield adversaries, died on May 27 at his home in Peoria, Ariz. He was 87. His wife, Judy Ketchum, confirmed the death on Monday, adding that the cause had not been determined. Decades before a convention eventually signed by more than 190 nations outlawed chemical weapons, Dr. Ketchum argued that recreational drugs favored by the counterculture could be used humanely to befuddle small units of enemy troops, and that a psychedelic "cloud of confusion" could stupefy whole battlefield regiments more ethically than the lethal explosions and flying steel of conventional weapons. [continues 1413 words]
WASHINGTON - John A. Boehner, the former speaker of the House, once stood second in line for the presidency and staunchly against legalized marijuana. Now you can find the longtime Republican standing before a wall-size photo of the Capitol, making an online infomercial pitch for the cannabis industry. "This is one of the most exciting opportunities you'll ever be part of," Mr. Boehner says in an endlessly streaming video for the National Institute for Cannabis Investors. "Frankly, we can help you make a potential fortune." [continues 1201 words]
Once Gov. Pritzker signs the bill into law, Illinois will become the first state to approve cannabis sales through the Legislature, instead of a ballot measure. SPRINGFIELD - A recreational marijuana legalization bill will soon land on Gov. J.B. Pritzker's desk after the Illinois House on Friday voted to pass the comprehensive measure. The Illinois House voted 66-47 after more than three hours of debate. The Illinois Senate on Wednesday cleared the measure. The governor issued a statement applauding the bill's passage and pledging to sign it. [continues 906 words]
On Wednesday, 24-year-old Emma Semler was sentenced to 21 years in federal prison for her frienda=80=99s overdose death. The Inquirera=80=99 s Jeremy Roebuck and Aubrey Whelan reported that in 2014, Emma met up with Jennifer Rose Werstler, a friend she had met in rehab. The two used heroin together in a bathroom of a restaurant in West Philadelphia. Jennifer overdosed and died. Emma, who brought the drugs and left the scene, was later charged by federal prosecutors and convicted of heroin distribution -- which has a mandatory minimum of 20 years if it involves a death. [continues 437 words]
By day, Dill Avenue is a relatively quiet street: a few residents walk their dogs or ride a bike and mostly keep to themselves. It wasn't always this way. Fulton County officials have seized a "notorious drug house" with the plan to renovate it and eventually sell it to a low-income family. For the past six years, the house at 730 Dill Avenue, located in the Capitol View community, has been the site of drug use and violent crime, including a stabbing and a killing, according to online police records. Atlanta police have received numerous complaints about the derelict property, some of which resulted in nine search warrants. [continues 78 words]
KEY BISCAYNE, Fla. - Don't hold your breath if you're thinking the NFL is on the brink of giving players the green light to smoke their pain away with marijuana. Go ahead, exhale. This is still going to take a while. Sure, the league has put a progressive foot forward in striking an agreement this week with the NFL Players Association in the name of holistic health and wellness. There's a joint committee coming - not joint as in blunt, but joint in that medical experts will be appointed by the league and union - that is charged to study data on several alternative methods of pain management and make recommendations. [end]
BALTIMORE - Heroin has ravaged this city since the early 1960s, fueling desperation and crime that remain endemic in many neighborhoods. But lately, despite heroin's long, deep history here, users say it has become nearly impossible to find. Heroin's presence is fading up and down the Eastern Seaboard, from New England mill towns to rural Appalachia, and in parts of the Midwest that were overwhelmed by it a few years back. It remains prevalent in many Western states, but even New York City, the nation's biggest distribution hub for the drug, has seen less of it this year. [continues 1518 words]
Only a few days ago, millions of American probably had never heard of psilocybin, the active agent in psychedelic mushrooms, but thanks to Denver, it is about to get its moment in the political sun. On Tuesday, the city's voters surprised everyone by narrowly approving a ballot initiative that effectively decriminalizes psilocybin, making its possession, use or personal cultivation a low-priority crime. The move is largely symbolic - only 11 psilocybin cases have been prosecuted in Denver in the last three years, and state and federal police may still make arrests - but it is not without significance. Psilocybin decriminalization will be on the ballot in Oregon in 2020 and a petition drive is underway in California to put it on the ballot there. For the first time since psychedelics were broadly banned under the 1970 Controlled Substances Act, we're about to have a national debate about the place of psilocybin in our society. Debate is always a good thing, but I worry that we're not quite ready for this one. [continues 859 words]
Voters in Denver, a city at the forefront of the widening national debate over legalizing marijuana, have become the first in the nation to effectively decriminalize another recreational drug: hallucinogenic mushrooms. The local ballot measure did not quite legalize the mushrooms that contain psilocybin, a naturally occurring psychedelic compound. State and federal regulations would have to change to accomplish that. But the measure made the possession, use or cultivation of the mushrooms by people aged 21 or older the lowest-priority crime for law enforcement in the city of Denver and Denver County. Arrests and prosecutions, already fairly rare, would all but disappear. [continues 634 words]
SHANCHONG, China - China has made your iPhone, your Nikes and, chances are, the lights on your Christmas tree. Now, it wants to grow your cannabis. Two of China's 34 regions are quietly leading a boom in cultivating cannabis to produce cannabidiol, or CBD, the nonintoxicating compound that has become a consumer health and beauty craze in the United States and beyond. They are doing so even though cannabidiol has not been authorized for consumption in China, a country with some of the strictest drug-enforcement policies in the world. [continues 1187 words]
To his die-hard fans, Mr. Sherbinski is a storied name in marijuana. A celebrated California cultivator, he helped create the Gelato and Sunset Sherbert strains that have been name-checked in more than 200 hip-hop songs, including "First Off" by Future and "Bosses Don't Speak" by Migos. At the Business of Fashion's Voices conference in London last year, his brand, Sherbinskis, was introduced as "the Supreme of marijuana." And when Sherbinskis released its first sneaker design last year at ComplexCon, a two-day festival of hip-hop and fashion in Long Beach, Calif., the limited-edition Nike Air Force 1 model sold out in two hours. (There is a pair currently on eBay asking more than $1,000.) [continues 609 words]
As attorneys argued over a section of Arizona law that differentiates between marijuana and cannabis, the state's Supreme Court justices joked about baking pot brownies in their kitchens. They clearly do not understand how the marijuana industry has irresponsibly manipulated pot into dangerously high levels of potency. My son could explain it to them. Or he could if he was still with us. "I want to die," he wrote before hanging himself at the age of 31. "My soul is already dead. Marijuana killed my soul + ruined my brain." [end]
SAN FRANCISCO - David Dancer is a 48-year-old marketing executive who has worked for big brands like Charles Schwab and Teleflora. A year ago, he got a call from a recruiter for a different kind of company: MedMen, a cannabis retailer that has been called "the Apple Store of weed." The opening was for a chief marketing officer. He took it. One of Mr. Dancer's early projects was a slick two-minute video by the director Spike Jonze that begins with an anecdote about George Washington as a hemp grower, a staple of dorm-room conversation. It concludes with a suburban couple coming home with a bright red bag of legally purchased pot, symbolizing "the new normal" - an ending that, like his own career twist, seemed improbable not long ago. [continues 1258 words]
COSTA MESA, Calif. - In the forests of Northern California, raids by law enforcement officials continue to uncover illicit marijuana farms. In Southern California, hundreds of illegal delivery services and pot dispensaries, some of them registered as churches, serve a steady stream of customers. And in Mendocino County, north of San Francisco, the sheriff's office recently raided an illegal cannabis production facility that was processing 500 pounds of marijuana a day. It's been a little more than a year since California legalized marijuana - the largest such experiment in the United States - but law enforcement officials say the unlicensed, illegal market is still thriving and in some areas has even expanded. [continues 1323 words]
Dasha Fincher said she was borrowing a friend's car when she noticed a half-eaten bag of blue cotton candy in the floorboard. It was the kind kids like to buy from gas stations near her Macon home. She thought little of it until a few minutes later when it became the biggest problem in her life. On New Year's Eve 2016, Monroe County deputies pulled the car over for a suspected window-tint violation and spotted the bag. They used a quick roadside test kit on the blue stuff and got a positive result for methamphetamine. Fincher ended up charged with trafficking meth and held in jail for three months on a breathtaking $1 million cash bond before a lab test found the "meth" was really just cotton candy, according to a lawsuit. [continues 1334 words]
SAN FRANCISCO - A billion dollars of tax revenue, the taming of the black market, the convenience of retail cannabis stores throughout the state - these were some of the promises made by proponents of marijuana legalization in California. One year after the start of recreational sales, they are still just promises. California's experiment in legalization is mired by debates over regulation and hamstrung by cities and towns that do not want cannabis businesses on their streets. California was the sixth state to introduce the sale of recreational marijuana - Alaska, Colorado, Nevada, Oregon and Washington paved the way - but the enormous size of the market led to predictions of soaring legal cannabis sales. [continues 1167 words]
There is a new tool to help battle the opioid epidemic that works like a pregnancy test to detect fentanyl, the potent substance behind the escalating number of deaths roiling communities around the country. The test strip, originally designed for the medical profession to test urine, can also be used off-label by heroin and cocaine users who fear their drugs have been adulterated with the synthetic opioid fentanyl. The strips are dipped in water containing a minute amount of a drug and generally provide a result within a minute-with one line indicating positive for fentanyl, and two lines negative. [continues 650 words]
Philadelphia stands to gain at least two new medical marijuana stores while Reading scored three more dispensaries with the awarding of permits Tuesday morning by the Pennsylvania Department of Health. MLH Explorations LLC, a cannabis company aligned with Thomas Jefferson University, won a permit to operate a retail outlet at 8th and Locust Streets. The retail outlet will do business as Solterra Care - Locust Street. Beyond/Hello, which is readying a dispensary at 12th and Sansom Streets for the first quarter of 2019, also plans to open a retail store at 475 N. 5th Street in Northern Liberties. Beyond / Hello is owned by Franklin Bioscience LLC which already operates a dispensary in Bristol. [continues 209 words]
CBD, a cannabis compound, is in everything from gumdrops to bath bombs. In Maplewood Mall, holiday shoppers pick up CBD tinctures from an organic hemp farm at the Nothing But Hemp kiosk. Festive gift sets with CBD-infused body lotions, shampoos and soaps are available a few miles away at Minnesota Hempdropz. Spot Spa in Minneapolis has CBD oil massages on its list of services and tries to keep pricey gourmet gumdrops from "aspirational" CBD purveyor Lord Jones on its shelves. The problem? They continually sell out. [continues 1241 words]
