Each of San Francisco's 11 supervisors has called for "equity" in the city's cannabis laws, meaning they want to create a racially diverse industry that gives former drug offenders a shot at success.

On Wednesday, Supervisor Malia Cohen presented an ordinance to help the city achieve its social justice goals when sales of recreational marijuana become legal throughout the state in January. The city won't issue permits to sell recreational cannabis until an equity program is approved.

Cohen's proposal - modeled after a similar program that Oakland approved in March and another that's being considered in Los Angeles - would prioritize permits for dispensary operators with marijuana arrests or convictions between 1971 and 2009. Also eligible for priority would be entrepreneurs who committed other nonviolent crimes during that time period, or who earn 80 percent of San Francisco's area median income, or who were displaced from their homes within the past 22 years.

[continues 475 words]

In an expansive report released Thursday that ranges from enforcement to treatment and research, President Donald Trump's opioid commission repeatedly discussed issues with funding to combat the deadly opioid crisis.

"The Commission urges Congress to respond to the President's declaration of a public health emergency and fulfill their constitutionally delegated duty and appropriate sufficient funds to implement the Commission's recommendation," the Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis wrote in the lengthy report.

This report comes about a week after Trump declared the epidemic a public health emergency, falling short of calling it a national emergency that would have allowed for more significant funding to be diverted to combat the issue that has killed thousands in Connecticut alone.

[continues 386 words]

Nine years after Michigan voters overwhelmingly approved an initiative that permits doctors to prescribe marijuana for therapeutic purposes, state and local lawmakers are still struggling to design a regulatory scheme that balances the interests of patients, providers and residents.

Earlier this year, Michigan legislators finally adopted a new regime that establishes distinct licensing criteria for growing, processing, testing, transporting and distributing the drug, which is still forbidden by federal law, and dividing the tax revenues generated by those activities between the state and local governments.

[continues 630 words]

In declaring the opioid epidemic a public health emergency last week, President Trump promised that the federal government would start "a massive advertising campaign to get people, especially children, not to want to take drugs in the first place." But past efforts to prevent substance abuse through advertising have often been ineffective or even harmful.

Perhaps the most famous American antidrug advertisement featured a sizzling egg in a frying pan to the sound of ominous music and a stern voice-over warning, "This is your brain on drugs." A sequel to this ad featured Rachael Leigh Cook smashing an egg and the better part of a kitchen to dramatize the impact of heroin.

[continues 689 words]

WASHINGTON - Everyday Advanced Hemp Oil, Bosom Lotion and CBD Edibles Gummie Men may have their fans, but the Food and Drug Administration is not among them.

Four companies selling those and dozens of other marijuana-derived dietary supplements have been warned by the F.D.A. to stop pitching their products as cures for cancer, a common but unproven claim in the industry.

"Substances that contain components of marijuana will be treated like any other products that make unproven claims to shrink cancer tumors," said Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the agency's commissioner, in a news release on Wednesday. "We don't let companies market products that deliberately prey on sick people with baseless claims that their substances can shrink or cure cancer."

[continues 617 words]

Help wanted: Pot inspector.

The Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources posted a listing on the state's career site Friday for an agricultural inspector who will specialize in a new crop in Massachusetts: cannabis.

"This Inspector position will enforce the laws and regulations involving hemp and overlapping laws and regulations that impact the cultivation of marijuana," the listing says.

Other duties of the job include providing "education and outreach to stakeholders relative to the enforcement of pertinent laws and regulations," and reporting and summarizing inspections, the listing says.

[continues 219 words]

Teens who use a lot of marijuana and alcohol are less likely to have a full time job when they grow up, or to get a college education or get married, according to a new study by University of Connecticut researchers.

The study of 1,165 young adults from across the U.S. also found that dependence on pot and booze may also have a "more severe effect on young men" than on young women.

"This study found that chronic marijuana use in adolescence was negatively associated with achieving important developmental milestones in young adulthood." - Elizabeth Harari, University of Connecticut researcher.

[continues 282 words]

An Oct. 28 letter to the Daily Herald advocated greater access to marijuana for people suffering chronic pain, citing a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). But if you visit the JAMA website and enter the search word "marijuana," you'll also see dozens of articles showing that marijuana can kill more than just pain: it can negatively impact things like cognitive function, moral clarity and the general health and well-being of users and their children and grandchildren.

[continues 157 words]

California's legal marijuana marketplace is coming with a kaleidoscope of new taxes and fees that could influence where it's grown, how pot cookies and other munchies are produced and the price tag on just about everything.

Be ready for sticker shock.

On a retail level, it costs about $35 to buy a small bag of good quality medical marijuana in Los Angeles, enough to roll five or six joints.

But in 2018, when recreational sales take hold and additional taxes kick in, the cost of that same purchase in the new market is expected to increase at the retail counter to $50 or $60.

[continues 586 words]

Make no mistake, the war on marijuana has not been colorblind. Despite national surveys showing that white people and black people use marijuana at approximately the same rates, blacks have over the years been nearly four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than whites.

That disparity is as true in Los Angeles as it is elsewhere in the country. African Americans comprise less than 10% of the population in L.A. Yet between 2000 and 2017, blacks represented 40% of marijuana-related arrests. Latinos made up 44% of arrests. Whites made up only 16% of arrests, according to a city consultant's analysis of Los Angeles Police Department data.

[continues 704 words]

Pot smokers in the US can't get off scot free, since many will now have to take it on the chin and pay a steep marijuana penalty -- to sign up with life insurers, that is.

Marijuana indulgence, recreational or medicinal, is sharply raising the price of some premiums, with certain issuers making the same risk assumptions for pot smokers as cigarette smokers.

The cost of a 20-year, $1 million life insurance policy, for example, can be as much as five times higher for a pot smoker compared with a clean-living nonsmoker, according to one broker.

[continues 274 words]

The Ohio Department of Commerce has approved 14 applications for small operations to grow medical marijuana, although only 11 will become operational.

The 11 sites on which up to 3,000 square feet can be cultivated, will be in addition to 12 sites on which 24,000 square feet can be cultivated. Successful applications for the large sites will be announced in coming weeks, Department of Commerce spokeswoman Stephanie Gostomski said.

Medical marijuana is expected to be available to consumers in about a year.

[continues 170 words]

The Pennsylvania Department of Health on Wednesday pledged to make medical marijuana available to patients by May and released a list of 109 approved practitioners statewide.

It also launched the medical marijuana patient and caregiver registry, with instructions on how those interested can sign up. More than 200,000 patients across the state could qualify for medical marijuana treatment.

Pennsylvanians with 17 medical conditions are eligible for medical marijuana patient ID cards.

Those conditions are Lou Gehrig's disease, autism, cancer, Crohn's disease, epilepsy, glaucoma, HIV/AIDS, Huntington's disease, inflammatory bowel disease, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, post-traumatic stress disorder, sickle cell anemia, spinal cord damage, chronic pain, neuropathies and intractable seizures.

[continues 410 words]

One painful aspect of the public debates over the opioid-addiction crisis is how much they mirror the arguments that arise from personal addiction crises. If you've ever had a loved one struggle with drugs -- in my case, my late brother, Josh -- the national exercise in guilt-driven blame-shifting and finger-pointing, combined with flights of sanctimony and ideological righteousness, has a familiar echo.

The difference between the public arguing and the personal agonizing is that, at the national level, we can afford our abstractions. When you have skin in the game, none of the easy answers seem all that easy.

[continues 666 words]

CALISTOGA, Calif. - Marijuana farmers and dispensary owners across Northern California are nervously watching as wildfires burn through some of the state's prime cannabis growing areas and destroy valuable crops, which could drive up prices for consumers across the country.

"This is right smack in the middle of people's harvests," said Eli Melrod, the CEO of Solful Dispensary in Sebastopol, in northern California. "It couldn't have been worse timing, frankly."

A single marijuana plant can be worth up to $5,000, but pot growers can't get crop insurance like traditional farmers or the vintners whose grapevines tend to get most of the attention here.

Wildfires are burning across parts of Napa, Sonoma and Mendocino counties, which are known for both wine and marijuana, particularly among high-end consumers willing to pay a premium for the name.

[end]

As an African-American woman who has seen the negative ramifications an ounce of marijuana can have on one's life, I found the article "Atlanta Mayor Reed to review, sign changes to city marijuana laws," hopeful.

According to ACLU, African-Americans are more than four times as likely to be arrested as white adults. By reducing the penalty and eliminating jail time, fewer African-Americans will have a criminal record. In Atlanta, African-Americans make up 92 percent of those arrested for marijuana possession. By decriminalizing marijuana and reducing the penalty, the crime rate amongst African-Americans will decrease.

A strict drug penalty is not stopping the usage of marijuana. Why not lessen the offense and put the money into the communities that are disproportionately affected by the incarceration rate?

Alexis Blackmon, Marietta

[end]

Anthony Gray expected to be an old man when he got out of prison after serving a 30-year sentence for a relatively minor drug offense.

Aron Tuff was certain he would die there, having been sentenced to life without parole after he was convicted in 1995 in Colquitt County for possession of .03 grams of cocaine with intent to distribute.

Both men were sentenced during a time when tough on crime drug laws of the 1980s and '90s left many low-level drug offenders serving long sentences.

[continues 99 words]

I am a pretty quintessential middle-class American woman. My ancestry is Danish and English-maybe some Scottish somewhere. I'm just enough of a WASP to have some ancestors who fought in the Revolution. But I certainly didn't feel superior to the blue-collar Italian and Irish kids in the lower-middle-class neighborhood where I grew up - in fact, I would have laughed at the notion that, merely as white people, any of us were privileged. I reserved that term for the rich kids living in big houses across town. In my book, privilege meant you had a lot more than my family had.

[continues 207 words]

You might want to think twice before you light up that joint in Piedmont Park or anywhere else in the city of Atlanta.

The drug is still illegal, despite Monday's move by the Atlanta City Council to eliminate jail time and reduce the penalty for possession of small amounts of marijuana, Atlanta Police Chief Erica Shields said Tuesday.

In an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Shields said some media and advocates of cannabis decriminalization are confusing the public by suggesting the Council's action gives Atlanta residents permission to use pot without consequence.

[continues 57 words]

The Atlanta City Council on Monday unanimously passed legislation eliminating jail time and reducing penalties on possession of small amounts of marijuana, but not before mayoral candidates got into heated debates and backers of the bill became rowdy.

The legislation, which was resurrected in September after spending months in committees because of concerns it might send the wrong message, brings Atlanta closer to other large cities across the nation that are either lessening penalties on pot or decriminalizing it altogether as Americans' opinions on the drug evolve.

It will reduce the financial penalty for possession of one ounce or less from up to $1,000 to a maximum of $75. Jail time, currently six months for possession, would be eliminated for an ounce or less.

[end]