Researchers hope the findings counter recent trends of mothers using marijuana for pregnancy-related nausea symptoms. Researchers in Minnesota and Iowa have found greater risks of social and emotional problems in infants whose mothers consumed marijuana during pregnancy. Using results of a developmental screening tool for 1-year-olds, the researchers found that 9.1% of babies from marijuana users were at risk, compared to 3.6% of babies whose mothers didn't consume the drug while pregnant. Researchers said the size of that gap was surprising, along with screening results showing that 8% of mothers tested positive during pregnancy for the presence of THC, the psychoactive component in marijuana, said Dr. Elyse Kharbanda, lead researcher of the study from the HealthPartners Institute in Bloomington, Minn. Researchers from the universities of Minnesota and Iowa co-authored the study, which was published in the Journal of Perinatology. [continues 286 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]
Legalizing marijuana is looming as a next big political showdown at the Minnesota State Capitol. Fully legalizing marijuana in Minnesota is looming as a next big political showdown at the Capitol, as a growing number of states are ending bans on recreational cannabis. Gov.-elect Tim Walz, who favors ending marijuana prohibition, will replace Gov. Mark Dayton, who doesn't. A new Democratic House majority will debate proposals to legalize next year and will likely take votes on the issue as soon as 2019 or 2020. And, not one but two legal pot parties -- the Grassroots-Legalize Cannabis Party and Legal Marijuana Now Party -- emerged with 5 percent of the vote in statewide elections, giving them "major party status," which means automatic ballot access and the chance for campaign subsidies. [continues 1075 words]
The Minnesota Department of Health is adding the degenerative neurological disorder to its cannabis program, which includes cancer pain, epileptic seizures, PTSD and autism. Research is limited, but findings suggest that cannabis inhibits the formation of proteins linked to memory loss and dementia. Alzheimer's disease will be eligible for treatment with medical marijuana in Minnesota starting next year, becoming the 14th health condition certified by the state since the program began in 2015. The Minnesota Department of Health announced Monday that it was adding the degenerative neurological disorder to its cannabis program, which already includes cancer pain, epileptic seizures, post-traumatic stress disorder and autism. [continues 525 words]
Researchers at the University of Minnesota are getting closer to clinical trials of a vaccine for opioid addiction. Three studies published in the past six months show incremental success, including one in the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics that demonstrated that a vaccine could prevent oxycodone and heroin opioid molecules from reaching the brain. "We are getting closer," said Marco Pravetoni, the lead researcher who has been studying a vaccine to treat addiction for 10 years. A vaccine to confront addiction might sound unusual, but it would work like any vaccine by stimulating the immune system to produce antibodies. Instead of targeting influenza or poliovirus, the antibodies would be coaxed to bind to opioid molecules and prevent them from crossing the bloodstream barrier to the brain. [continues 206 words]
With decriminalization advancing coast to coast, legalized pot appears on its way, and Minnesota will light up the debate this year. Change is overdue. I don't smoke marijuana. There are secret purchases required, plus the learning of code, dealer etiquette, dosing expertise, exotic strains, the latest artisanal delivery systems, and it all sounds way too complicated. Also, because it's easy to forget this detail, pot is illegal. But even if pot were decriminalized tomorrow - a proposal on the table at the State Capitol - the chances of my racing out to score some "Chronicles of Narnia" and then heading home to roll up a fatty are, well, slim. Unlike Bill Clinton, the one time I did blaze up, over 20 years ago, I inhaled quite deeply enough to find the effect unpleasant. Some of us have all the feelings of alienation and existential weirdness you could ask for, thank you very much. [continues 2267 words]
Latest stops in northwestern Minnesota show surge of drug traffic into the state. It seemed like an innocuous driving violation: A woman was motoring through Otter Tail County in northwestern Minnesota with an obstructed license plate. Then the observant state trooper discovered she was sitting on packages of marijuana. Troopers seized more than 300 pounds of the weed during the stop last Friday, the latest of several large pot busts the State Patrol has made in the past few weeks and a sign that the surge of large quantities of pot and illegal drugs into Minnesota is continuing. [continues 329 words]
There aren't a lot of concrete answers as to why marijuana transactions are deadlier, but there are theories. The morning Kim Ambers turned 50, her oldest son, Richard Ambers, called to wish her a happy birthday. I love you, he told her. It was a tradition for the Ambers family members to see one another on birthdays, but Kim Ambers' celebration would have to wait. Richard was working and had a Halloween party afterward. The whole family would go out for breakfast the next day, on Oct. 29, 2016. [continues 1106 words]
A sleeper issue has emerged among DFL candidates in the 2018 governor's race: Marijuana. St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman, state Reps. Erin Murphy, Tina Liebling and Paul Thissen, and U.S. Rep. Tim Walz all support legalizing marijuana for recreational and not just medical use. Among the major DFL candidates, only State Auditor Rebecca Otto declined to do so. "When you confront the reality of the cost of criminalization vs. the benefits of legalization, I think the benefits outweigh the costs," said Coleman, whose campaign approached the Star Tribune to discuss the issue. [continues 675 words]
The decision is to take effect in August, but evidence counters the notions that the drug is beneficial and that there aren't alternatives. As a staff psychiatrist working at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center, I was alarmed to hear that the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) is adding post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a qualifying condition for medical marijuana use starting in August 2017. During a press event on Dec. 1, Dr. Ed Ehlinger, commissioner of MDH, was quoted as saying, "PTSD presented the strongest case for potential benefits and a lack of treatment alternatives." [continues 416 words]
Minnesotans seeking pain relief have quickly become the second-largest group of patients in the state's medical marijuana program, even though they became eligible just one month ago. One out of three patients enrolled in the program is seeking relief from chronic pain, according to figures released this week by the Office of Medical Cannabis. The Minnesota Department of Health added intractable pain to the shortlist of qualifying conditions for the program on Aug. 1. By Aug. 31, there were more pain patients - 847 - than patients with cancer, epilepsy and terminal illnesses combined. [continues 738 words]
In its Aug. 8 Short Takes space, the Star Tribune reprinted an editorial from the Washington Post condemning the new Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and his war on drugs, which includes extrajudicial killings of drug lords and pushers ("The Philippines' drug war: Homicidal justice kills the rule of law"). What the editors don't know is that Duterte is the first president in my lifetime (and I am 65) who cannot be bought. I personally know a rich businessman who had bet on the wrong horse for president. The day after election, he flew to Davao City (where Duterte lives) with a bag full of cash. He waited one whole day and couldn't get in to see Duterte. [continues 96 words]
A year ago this weekend, little Harlow Hundley took her first dose of medical marijuana. By the time her family gathered for their July 4th picnic, the little girl, then 3 years old and wracked by seizures that damaged her brain and endangered her life, was giggling and playing with her cousins "like she'd never done before," her mother told reporters Friday as she wiped away tears outside a downtown Minneapolis clinic. It wasn't a cure, but Harlow's life is better now than it was a year ago. She suffers half as many seizures, even as they weaned her off the harshest medications she was taking. She plays with toys and interacts with people. She communicates with an adaptive iPad. [continues 900 words]
Opioid deaths are down 25 percent in states where medical marijuana is legal. On July 1, it will be legally available to many more Minnesotans, if doctors and patients are willing to pursue it. Last December, the Star Tribune reported that in Minnesota deaths from prescription and illegal opioids had risen sixfold since 2000, with 317 lives claimed in 2014 alone. Chronic pain doesn't discriminate - prescription opiates and heroin both metabolize to morphine in our bodies. Rich, poor, unknown or superstar: All are vulnerable to these risks when escalating doses of prescription opiate medication are their bridge to temporary relief. [continues 650 words]
First Seeds Are Being Planted Since the 1950s. For the first time in generations, Minnesota farmers are planting hemp. "We're the first ones putting seeds in the ground since the 1950s," said Ken Anderson, watching as a bottle-blue tractor trundled across a field near Hastings on a sunny Friday afternoon. The 8.5-acre tract is the first of at least half a dozen hemp fields to be cultivated this summer under the Minnesota Department of Agriculture's new industrial hemp pilot project. [continues 681 words]
Nearly all - 90 percent - cite benefit and expense. Patients enrolled in Minnesota's medical marijuana program say the treatment helps - if they can afford it. Almost all the patients and health care providers who responded to a new Minnesota Department of Health survey reported that medical cannabis offered mild to substantial relief, and few side effects, for every illness currently allowed in the program. The survey comes as the program approaches its first anniversary struggling with sluggish enrollment, skeptical doctors, high prices and few clinics. [continues 613 words]
Vireo, The Parent Company Of Minnesota Medical Solutions, Denied The Accusations Saying The Missing Cannabis Oils Were Destroyed. Accusations made by a former employee that a Minnesota-based medical marijuana company illegally transported cannabis oil out of state prompted an investigation and audit by local authorities. The employee said that at least $500,000 worth of cannabis oil (or about 370 grams) was sent from Minnesota Medical Solutions's Otsego growing facility to their parent company's New York location in order to meet that state's production deadline, according to a search warrant filed on May 26 in Hennepin County. [continues 480 words]
Minnesota Company Is Petitioning Search Engine Giant to Accept Ads. Thousands of people have signed a Minnesota company's petition to Google, asking the search engine to accept online ads for medical marijuana. Minnesota-based Vireo Health has been trying for months to get Google to accept ads for a string of clinics it operates in New York. But Google rejected each ad, citing its policy against promoting "dangerous products or services." So Vireo - the parent company of Minnesota Medical Solutions, one of this state's two designated medical cannabis retailers - circulated a petition on Change. org, asking the company to reconsider. As of Friday afternoon, the petition had more than 13,000 signatures from across the country. [continues 586 words]
It Will Be State's Fourth Dispensary; Four More Must Open by July 1. The city of Bloomington, which once issued a one-year moratorium on medical marijuana, has opened its doors to the state's next dispensary. The City Council this week approved plans to open a medical cannabis care center by midsummer. The unanimous vote came after the city spent a year watching how Minnesota's fledgling medical marijuana program was working in other communities. "When they said they put in the moratorium to study the issue, that is indeed what they were doing," said Dr. Kyle Kingsley, CEO of Minnesota Medical Solutions, one of the state's two medical cannabis contractors. [continues 547 words]
I'd like to point out some inaccuracies in the April 23 article "Marijuana wax is a rising concern." In the states that have legalized marijuana, what we haven't seen is an increase in crime. We haven't seen an increase in death. We haven't seen any real social problems in these states that stem from legalized marijuana. At the end of the article, Brian Marquardt, statewide gang and drug coordinator for the Department of Public Safety's Office of Justice Programs, states that making marijuana wax is as deadly as smoking it. This is a false statement. While it is true that people can die from explosions from making the wax as mentioned in your article, I don't know of anyone who has ever died directly from ingesting marijuana in any form. It's physically impossible to take as much as you would need to overdose. [continues 159 words]
The number of medical marijuana clinics in Minnesota will almost triple in the next few months. That's by design. In fact, it's mandated by state law. When Minnesota legalized medical cannabis last year, lawmakers set some of the most restrictive ground rules in the nation. Minnesota would decide who could grow the drug, who could buy it, and in what form it could be sold. The state also strictly limited where medical marijuana can be sold - just eight storefronts, scattered across the state. [continues 512 words]
Google Considers Cannabis Dangerous, Unacceptable. A Minnesota-based medical marijuana company says Google is blocking its attempts to advertise online. Vireo, the parent company of Minnesota Medical Solutions, tried to take out a series of online ads in New York, where it operates four clinics and is one of several companies chosen by that state to grow and manufacture medical cannabis. Each time, Google rejected the ads, citing its policy against promoting "dangerous products or services." On Monday, the company expanded its online advertising efforts to include the two Minnesota clinics operated by Minnesota Medical Solutions. Enrollment in Minnesota's medical cannabis program remains relatively low - 1,133 patients since legalization last July. But Vireo announced that it would also attempt to place "Minnesota-targeted Google ads to make it easier for Minnesota patients to learn about using our medicines." [continues 463 words]
Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel Tom Wainwright, PublicAffairs, 278 pages, $26.99. In "Narconomics," Tom Wainwright of the Economist brings a fine and balanced analytical mind to some very good research, undertaken largely in northern Mexico. By looking at the drug trade as a business, Wainwright is able to reveal much about why it wreaks such havoc in Central and South America. The issue of violence is not a random by-product of gangster culture. It is central to the industry, Wainwright observes, as the only way "to enforce contractual agreements." To control or police a market like drugs, the cartel must be able to wield decisive violence or, at the very least, be able to project a credible threat of violence. [continues 151 words]
Officials Ask Public to Identify Dealers, Users As Wave Hits Northern Minn. A wave of heroin overdose deaths and hospitalizations across northern Minnesota prompted an urgent plea from authorities Wednesday for the public's help in identifying dealers and users in an effort to prevent further tragedies. Seven people have died and more than a dozen have been hospitalized in the past few weeks after ingesting heroin that in many cases was made even deadlier by the presence of added narcotics such as morphine and fentanyl, authorities said at Wednesday's news conference in Bemidji, Minn. [continues 735 words]
A Panel Heard Testimony on Pros and Cons of a New Approach. An emotional crowd jammed a hearing Wednesday as state leaders tried sorting through a proposal to overhaul Minnesota's drug sentencing guidelines to decrease prison time and better distinguish addicts from potentially violent drug dealers. Randy Anderson, a three-time felon in his 10th year of recovery from cocaine addiction, said the assumption that all dealers are dangerous is ludicrous. At the height of his addiction, he was using 10 to 14 grams a day and dealing drugs just to support his habit. When the police came for him, he was charged with possessing more than 1,000 grams of cocaine. While desperately addicted, he says he was never violent. [continues 685 words]
Everybody agrees our prisons are filled with nonviolent drug users, especially pot smokers. But they aren't. The consensus in favor of looser drug laws is just the latest political free lunch. It seems that no presidential debate this year would be complete without denunciations of the drug laws, which, it is alleged, result in long prison terms for thousands of people, disproportionately African-Americans, who are guilty only of low-level offenses, thus fueling "mass incarceration." At the last Republican debate, on Sept. 16, former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina charged that "two-thirds of the people in our prisons are there for nonviolent offenses, mostly drug-related." [continues 731 words]
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) - Hemp has been legally harvested in Minnesota for the first time in more than 60 years. A new state law passed this year allows researchers from the University of Minnesota to collect wild hemp. Researchers scoured the overgrown grounds at Fort Snelling Wednesday and cut some wild hemp. Dr. George Weiblen has been studying hemp for more than a decade. Weiblen says he has not been able to collect wild cannabis seed until now and had to import it from the Netherlands and Canada. Weiblen says he and other researchers hope to create new varieties with an aim toward reviving a domestic hemp industry in the U.S. He says that unlike traditional marijuana, the wild hemp has very little THC, the psychoactive compound. [end]
I applaud Human Services Commissioner Lucinda Jesson, U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger and the Star Tribune Editorial Board for highlighting the need to address the alarming rates of addiction to and fatal overdose of prescription painkillers and heroin ("Minnesota needs state strategy to fight pain pill, heroin addiction," Aug. 24, and "Pain pill abuses are aired at conference," Aug. 26). While it will not be a panacea, emerging data suggest that modifying Minnesota's medical cannabis program to allow intractable pain patients to legally use medical cannabis can help ("State weighs medical cannabis for chronic pain," Aug. 26). [continues 152 words]
Minnesota certainly does need a new strategy to fight opioid addiction ("Closing the gateway that leads to heroin," editorial, Aug. 25). Unfortunately, Gov. Mark Dayton bowed to the pressure of law enforcement lobbyists and supported a limited medicinal cannabis law that excluded intractable pain. Studies have found that states with medical marijuana laws have fewer deaths from opioid overdoses than those without. Other studies have shown that cannabis has the potential to manage pain symptoms and at least reduce the dosage of opioids needed to manage severe pain. The risks of opioids include addiction and death from overdose. Cannabis is a much safer alternative. It has a much lower risk for dependence, and there has yet to be a documented death from overdose. [continues 104 words]
Either Americans are the most evil people on Earth or there's something terribly wrong with their criminal-justice system. We hope it's the latter. With less than 5 percent of the world's population, the United States has nearly 25 percent of the world's prisoners. The U.S. locks people up at a rate nearly five times the world's average. Since 1980, its inmate population has more that quadrupled. How to explain? First, there's the sad reality that U.S. crime rates, despite their general decline in recent years, are still far higher than those of other advanced democracies - stoked, perhaps, by the nation's sharp social disparities and the easy access to firearms. Then there's the sad reality that jails and prisons, rather than hospitals, are being used to warehouse the mentally ill. An estimated 16 percent of the nation's inmate population suffers a mental disorder. [continues 471 words]
Patients Struggle to Find Doctors Willing to Help. One month after legalization, there are still more doctors than patients enrolled in Minnesota's medical marijuana program. As of Friday morning, there were 250 patients and 334 health care practitioners enrolled in the Health Department's Office of Medical Cannabis. Even so, patients eligible for the program have struggled to find doctors willing to help them enroll. Those who do make it into the program are facing rising prices for a medication that's not covered by any insurance. [continues 587 words]
State Officials Expect Enrollment to Keep Growing; 276 Patients Are Already Certified. Minnesota's nascent medical marijuana program saw its greatest weekly jump in participants with growth of 50 percent in the first full week of July. As of Friday, 147 patients had paid their fees, completed their paperwork and were eligible to participate in the program. That was up from the 98 patients approved at the end of the month-long enrollment leading up to the July 1 legalization date. [continues 282 words]
(AP) - This week, Minnesota will be the latest state to enter the world of medical marijuana. Patients and advocates already have changes in mind, and clinics don't start selling the medicine until Wednesday. The state has some of the tightest restrictions in the country. Smoking the plant is banned, and only oils and pills are allowed. The drugs are being sold in only eight locations. Maren Schroeder helped her mother, Kathy Schroeder, get signed up for access in the hope of treating multiple sclerosis and glaucoma. She says the issues have been worse than she had anticipated. Some advocates hope the state will add more dispensaries and allow people suffering chronic pain to get medical marijuana. [end]
Lifting the prohibition might make sense, but it's not the issue. The Constitution is. As surely as presidential candidates promise to change Washington, nominees for attorney general pledge to uphold the law, not personal policy preferences. Loretta Lynch, now the 83rd attorney general of the United States, was no different when she made her case to Congress in January. Trying to distinguish herself from her lightning rod of a predecessor, Eric H. Holder Jr., she said the law would be her "lodestar." [continues 695 words]
(AP) - There will be no baggies of pot awaiting patients this week when Minnesota joins 21 other states in offering medical marijuana. Instead, the nation's latest medical marijuana program is a world of pill bottles and vials of marijuana-infused oil. For the qualifying patients seeking relief from pain, medical marijuana advocates and some lawmakers, Wednesday isn't the finish line, but the first step. The state's restrictive approach, unseen in the industry, is expected to mean high costs, long drives and reluctant doctors. [continues 86 words]
Regarding Ed Gogek's June 8 commentary "Why docs don't favor medical pot": While there have been studies showing that marijuana can shrink cancerous tumors, medical marijuana is essentially a palliative drug. If a doctor recommends marijuana to a cancer patient undergoing chemotherapy and it helps the patient feel better, it's working. Medical marijuana is a quality-of-life decision best left to patients and their doctors. Drug warriors waging war on noncorporate drugs contend that organic marijuana is not an effective health intervention. Their prescribed intervention for medical-marijuana patients is handcuffs, jail cells and criminal records. This heavy-handed approach suggests that drug warriors should not be dictating health care decisions. Robert Sharpe, Arlington, Va. The writer is a policy analyst for Common Sense for Drug Policy. [end]
What is it with these doctors? They can't prescribe medical marijuana because it might, what... turn them into addicts or heaven forbid, kill them ("Patients scramble for pot doctors," June 11)? It bothers me that they've justified their actions on that basis when, really, all they're thinking about is their own professional safety. I watched my mother die of ALS over the course of a year, and I would have moved heaven and earth (or to Colorado) if there was the slightest chance something might ease her suffering. No human should have to suffer like that when there is something that might ease their pain. Shame on all of you doctors for hiding behind the veil of unknown risk when the known risk is a horrifying, painful death. Laurel DeLaittre, Shorewood [end]
Legalization Makes It Easier for Teens to Get It, and We Have Other Drug Options. Legislatures across the country are legalizing medical marijuana, but the nation's physicians aren't requesting these laws. The American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Society of Addiction Medicine are both against medical marijuana laws. The American Medical Association doesn't support them either. Groups representing patients aren't behind these laws. The American Cancer Society hasn't demanded them, and the Glaucoma Foundation even warns patients against using the drug. [continues 705 words]
In an Otsego greenhouse, Minnesota's first medical cannabis crop is in bloom. Young marijuana plants, fuzzy and pungent, stretched toward the skylights as Dr. Kyle Kingsley threaded between the plant beds, leading state media on a tour of the Minnesota Medical Solutions facility that will supply half of Minnesota's legal medical marijuana. "You'll see this place is pretty Spartan," Kingsley said, walking past bare white walls, concrete floors, and banks of monitors scanning the secure facility and its perimeter. There's a faint skunky smell in the air that hits visitors as soon as they reach the first of the three locked doors that lead into the building. "We put our focus on science and medicine," Kingsley continued, walking among rows of seedlings and plants. More than 4,000 plants and dozens of cannabis strains fill the greenhouses and spill out into the atriums. [continues 1003 words]
Now that medical marijuana is legal in Minnesota and disbursement is set to begin July 1, employers should review their policies regarding such workplace procedures as drug testing and the Americans With Disabilities Act to ensure they protect the business, as well as the employee. Minnesota's law authorizes the use of medical marijuana for patients suffering from several medical conditions including glaucoma, HIV/AIDS, certain cancers, seizure disorders, Crohn's disease and illnesses causing severe and persistent muscle spasms. Individuals eligible for the medication are required to enroll in a statewide registry. [continues 687 words]
Tribe Could Become State's First to Grow and Sell Marijuana on Its Lands Indian tribes have the right to legalize marijuana on their own lands, the federal government now says. At least one Minnesota tribe may do just that. The Red Lake Band of Chippewa announced in January that it will study the idea legalizing medical marijuana and industrial hemp on the reservation north of Bemidji. "Whatever we do, it will be done very carefully," Red Lake Chairman Darrell Seki Sr. announced after the Red Lake Tribal Council voted Jan. 13 to conduct a feasibility study into the economic benefits - and potential risks - of getting into the cannabis business. Seki will conduct a series of community meetings around the Red Lake Nation throughout February. [continues 506 words]
The Body of Andrew Sadek Was Recovered From the Red River Last Year. A North Dakota college student whose body was found last year in the Red River had worked as an informant for a drug task force until shortly before he died, according to a report by the North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI). Andrew Sadek, who died of a gunshot to the head, was recruited as an informant after he allegedly sold less than an ounce of marijuana to a police operative twice on the North Dakota State College of Science campus in April 2013. After authorities allegedly found a marijuana grinder in his dorm room in November 2013, they interviewed Sadek and told him about the charges he could face. [continues 234 words]
Gov. Mark Dayton's proposals this year include a half-cent metro-area sales tax increase to pay for transit. In my industry as a jeweler, our sales tax is already high enough to drive a very high percentage of diamond buyers online to avoid many hundreds of dollars in tax on their once-in-a-lifetime, expensive engagement ring purchase. Instead of raising the sales tax, how about embracing the inevitable and legalizing and taxing recreational marijuana? New taxes collected could be designated for infrastructure renewal without raising sales taxes and driving more business out of state. This could be quite a boon to our economy, provided lawmakers strike a good tax rate balance to avoid driving pot sales underground. James Roettger, Minneapolis [end]
MADISON, MINN. - Minnesota mother Angela Brown, who gave her son an illegal drug that will be legal by this time next year, appeared in Lac qui Parle County court Wednesday morning, where her attorney appealed for the charges against her to be dismissed. Brown stands accused of two gross misdemeanor counts of child endangerment for giving cannabis oil to her son Trey, who suffered seizures and agonizing pain from a head injury. By July, medical marijuana will be legal in Minnesota. But since that law isn't in effect yet, the Lac qui Parle County attorney opted to prosecute Brown after an official at Trey's school tipped off child protective services. Brown is charged, not with possession of the small amount of cannabis in the dropper bottle, but of endangering her child by involving him in a drug transaction. [continues 315 words]
Minnesota's eight medical marijuana centers won't be conveniently located for many outside the Twin Cities. Minnesota has 87 counties, but you'll only be able to buy medical marijuana in eight of them. With half the state's proposed clinics clustered around the Twin Cities, gaps in the cannabis coverage map will leave some families hours away from the nearest clinic. Four marijuana distribution sites will open within 20 miles of the Twin Cities: Minneapolis, St. Paul, Eagan and Maple Grove. Four more will open outstate: St. Cloud, Hibbing, Moorhead and Rochester. The first clinics will open by July, when patients with serious, chronic or terminal illnesses can begin lining up to buy cannabis products legally. [continues 1103 words]
Minnesota's leap into the era of legal weed began with the selection last week of two companies that will grow, process and sell medical cannabis to patients. LeafLine Labs and Minnesota Medical Solutions proved to the state that they had the financial wherewithal, technical prowess and security procedures to do the job. But if you want to know the details, you're out of luck. Much of that information has been redacted from the companies' applications, which have been posted on the website of the state Department of Health. They're considered trade secrets, nonpublic business data or sensitive security information. Minnesota law allows the state to keep that information from us. [continues 587 words]
The State Will Reveal Two Suppliers on Monday. Next week, the Minnesota Department of Health will name the two companies it has selected to grow and refine the state's entire supply of medical marijuana. While some communities are ready to welcome new agribusinesses, others have taken steps to block marijuana outlets from setting up shop. The city of Duluth, which spent years battling a downtown head shop, just passed a six-to 12-month moratorium on any talk of zoning for medical marijuana manufacturing or dispensing facilities. The Minneapolis suburb of Richfield passed a similar moratorium in October after two different cannabis companies approached the city about setting up dispensaries there, should they get the nod from the state. [continues 618 words]
By putting "Grassroots-Legalize Cannabis" and "Legal Marijuana Now" under the names of legalization candidates, Minnesotans saw legalization on the ballot for the first time and voted for it in record numbers. Dan Vacek's plebiscite-by-proxy theory worked so well that even the monopoly media censorship of minor parties couldn't stop the voters from seeing legalization on the ballot. Vacek earned 57,602 votes for Legal Marijuana Now, spent less than $500 and outpolled better-funded, better-publicized candidates from the Independence, Green and Libertarian parties - all of whom supported marijuana legalization but didn't say so on their ballot designation. [continues 142 words]
Two years ago, we lost the vote on two vital issues: The marriage amendment and voter ID. There is another big issue lurking and, it seems to me, will be coming up in the near future. That is legalization of marijuana. It is already legal in Minnesota for medical use, and that has been a first step to further open the door to "recreational" marijuana. From information out of Colorado, it has been socially disastrous and legally chaotic. We failed to protect the future of our children and grandchildren two years ago. Don't let it happen again. Get out and vote for the conservative candidates who will support your values. It really is important. DON ENGEBRETSON, Excelsior [end]
Don't drool over the tax revenue. Know that medical cannabis is competition. Worry about edibles. Colorado and Washington state knew they were jumping into the unknown when voters legalized recreational marijuana two years ago. They just didn't know the half of it. But thanks to what we've learned from the two pioneering states, it is easier for those that follow to separate hype from hemp. The experience should not discourage other places from taking the legalization plunge but rather help them design a system that works better, a necessary step as the movement spreads. (Legalization plans are on the November ballot in Oregon, Alaska and Washington, D.C. - and California and Nevada, among others, are likely to follow in a year or two). [continues 676 words]
Inside Minnesota
