WeedLife News Network

Legislative leaders in Mississippi have requested that Republican Governor Tate Reeves convene a special legislative session in the coming days to address medical marijuana access.

The request comes after lawmakers last week revealed that they have reached an agreement on a draft legislation to regulate medical marijuana access in the state. If the Governor agrees to convene a special session, it would likely begin on Friday October 1. 

On Election Day 2020, 73 percent of Mississippi voters decided in favor of Initiative 65, which established a system of state-licensed dispensaries to engage in the retail dispensing of cannabis and cannabis products to patients who possess a doctor’s authorization. However, just prior to the vote, officials representing the city of Madison – including the town’s Republican Mayor – filed suit arguing that the legislature’s failure to update guidelines for petitioners should invalidate the initiative vote. The state Supreme Court eventually decided 6 to 3 to nullify the vote in favor of Initiative 65.

The new legislative proposal being advanced by lawmakers permits qualified patients, including those with chronic pain, to obtain herbal cannabis and other formulations of marijuana from licensed facilities.

Localities would be permitted to opt out of allowing marijuana businesses to operate in their jurisdiction, a provision that differs from that of the voter-approved measure. 

It may not come as a surprise to hear there is a global opioid crisis happening right now. Outside the UK and US, countries like Norway, Portugal, Sweden and Estonia are also experiencing opioid overuse and addiction. Carl Esprey look’s at why the humble marijuana plant used to create medicinal cannabis could signal the end of the opioid crisis.

In clinical trials, over 85% of UK patients reported that they found medicinal cannabis to be more effective in treating pain than opioids and other pain medicine, suggesting that prescribing cannabis for medical use could help resolve the global opioid crisis.

The Fight Against Chronic Pain

Millions of people across the world suffer from chronic pain in one form or another every day. Chronic pain lasts three months or longer and has a significant negative impact on a person quality of life. The Covid-19 pandemic has left many more people suffering from musculoskeletal pain after coming down with the virus and has reportedly caused those already experiencing chronic pain to suffer from more significant pain with what is now known as long-Covid.

According to the British Medical Journal (BMJ), “chronic pain affects between one-third and one-half of the population of the UK, corresponding to just under 28 million adults, based on data from the best available published studies. This figure is likely to increase further in line with an ageing population.” Science Daily says, “Researchers report that 50.2 million (20.5 per cent) U.S. adults experience chronic pain based on analysis of the new NHIS data. They estimated the total value of lost productivity due to chronic pain to be nearly $300 billion annually.”

Traditionally, certainly since the 90s, opioids have been the go-to for physicians to prescribe for pain symptoms. The unfortunate reality is that opioids are highly addictive, which has led to people taking more than the recommended dose, taking them too frequently and in some cases overdose, leading to death! For this reason, even the UN is looking into the global opioid crisis and considering how it is best managed.

The nation’s largest prosecutor’s office is moving to dismiss roughly 60,000 marijuana convictions, the latest step to undo what some reform advocates consider the damage caused by narcotics enforcement carried out before Californians voted to legalize marijuana, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón announced Monday.

Under previous Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey, the office moved last year to dump 66,000 marijuana convictions that took place before voters passed Proposition 64, the state law legalizing recreational marijuana use. But that list was compiled using information collected by the California Department of Justice, and Gascón said his office was able to identify tens of thousands more eligible cases by combing L.A. County court records.

“Dismissing these convictions means the possibility of a better future to thousands of disenfranchised people who are receiving this long-needed relief,” Gascón said in a statement. “It clears the path for them to find jobs, housing and other services that previously were denied to them because of unjust cannabis laws.”

Gascón has long championed efforts to reverse what he sees as the racially disparate and overly punitive effects of the nation’s war on drugs. While serving as San Francisco’s top prosecutor, he sought the dismissal of nearly 9,000 felony and misdemeanor marijuana convictions that were processed before the passage of Proposition 64. As part of that effort, Gascón partnered with nonprofit tech organization Code for America, which developed an algorithm to analyze county data and identify cases eligible to be cleared under Proposition 64.

The Blossoming Hemp Trend

Effects of CBD on Pets: Unravelling Facts from Fiction

Moving Forward

Sun Provisions in Decatur is a little, family-owned marijuana shop with an extraction lab in the back.

“It’s been a struggle,” said Helen Sun, 33, Sun Provisions operations manager and daughter of the owner. “We came really close to having to restructure, but we were able to squeeze by and make it from one harvest to another.

“I think we’ll be OK, but the difference between feast and famine is going to be allowing us to grow and do more.”

Cannabis stocks, growth stocks, and all kinds of investments have been volatile this month. The S&P 500 is down nearly 2% since the start of September and the Horizons Marijuana Life Sciences ETF has dropped by 9%. Although some investors may feel the urge to scramble for the exits, the recent sell-off could present some attractive buying opportunities.

One stock investors may be considering is pot producer Sundial Growers (NASDAQ:SNDL). Earlier this year, Reddit investors turned it into a meme stock, creating a buying wave that sent it to a high of nearly $4 a share. This week, its stock fell as low as $0.68 -- its lowest level since May 13, when it touched $0.65.

It’s been almost a year since New Jersey voters passed by a 2-1 margin a “Constitutional Amendment to Legalize Marijuana,” as it was misleadingly labeled.

“It might provide an entertaining refreshment for a Ladies’ Bridge Club or a chapter meeting of the DAR,” Toklas wrote. “Euphoria and brilliant storms of laughter; ecstatic reveries and extensions of one’s personality on several simultaneous planes are to be complacently expected.”Not in New Jersey. As we approach the first anniversary of that amendment’s passage, the new bureaucracy called “The Cannabis Regulatory Commission” has not yet accomplished the simple task of legalizing marijuana.But the CRC has one major accomplishment: It has prohibited the sale of any marijuana products “resembling food.” The only acceptable edibles will be lozenges.

The regulations exclude brownies, cookies, and those chocolate bars that are so popular with the customers at NJ Weedman’s restaurant/pot dispensary on State Street in Trenton.

But towns all over the state are strengthening their anti-smoking ordinances to counter the pot smokers. So why ban the sort of marijuana that produces no fumes?

Evan Nison of the New Jersey Chapter of the National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws (NORML) said that is counter-productive.

Hemp is easily one of the most valuable crops in the world today.

Not only does it produce the versatile healing compound cannabidiol (CBD) in larger doses than cannabis, but it also has several eco-friendly uses. Scientists around the world already recognize its potential in helping fight the seemingly uphill battle against climate change. It can be used to make a wide variety of things from construction materials to paper, cotton, food, and more but it has such a high value for both the economy as well as the ecosystem.

Here’s how hemp can help fight climate change.

Hemp absorbs massive amounts of carbon dioxide

Carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted by industrial processes especially fossil fuels and livestock are one of the main culprits behind greenhouse gasses that are causing global warming. While plants are great at absorbing CO2, hemp has been shown to be so much efficient in absorbing carbon dioxide compared to other trees and plants.

A 2010 scientific report revealed that each ton of hemp is able to absorb as much as 1.63 tons of carbon dioxide. In addition, it can trap the gas and will store it for as long as hemp is alive. Isn’t that incredible? It’s also just so much more feasible to use hemp because the plant is capable of growing 13 feet in just 100 days, while it takes other newly planted tree species decades to mature.

Legislative negotiators and leaders have agreed on a draft of medical marijuana legislation, and are anticipated to ask Gov. Tate Reeves as early as Friday to call the Legislature into special session, sources close to the negotiations said Thursday.

Legislative leaders on Thursday released some details of the proposal — which had been kept close to the vest for months — such as that cities and counties will be allowed to “opt out” of having medical marijuana cultivation or dispensaries, although local voters can override this. 

Negotiations have dragged on throughout the summer on crafting a medical marijuana program to replace one passed by Mississippi voters in November but shot down in May by the state Supreme Court on a constitutional technicality.

House Speaker Philip Gunn in a Thursday interview on a Supertalk radio show said he believed the House and Senate leadership and negotiators are “in agreement” on a draft bill, and he believes both chambers have the votes to pass such a measure. He said he planned to get together with Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, then barring any last minute glitches “inform the governor we are ready.”

Other sources close to the negotiations on Thursday told Mississippi Today they anticipate that request to the governor would happen as soon as Friday. Reeves has sole authority to call lawmakers into special session, and would set the date and parameters of a special session.

Politicians and associates in New York on both sides of the aisle are implicated in alleged involvement of misappropriated money to benefit the launch of a pot business. Two Rudy Giuliani associates—Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman—told a Russian millionaire in 2018 they offered a $125,000 straw donation to then-Governor Andrew Cuomo to curry favor in launching a pot business in New York, court filings say.

First reported by New York Daily News, the ongoing scandal continues to reveal a web of corruption in marijuana markets in multiple states.

Cuomo signed legislation on March 31 to legalize adult-use cannabis in New York, but was criticized for dragging his feet in getting the market up and running. New York Governor Kathy Hochul, who replaced Cuomo, promised to pick up where Cuomo failed, and get the state’s adult-use cannabis market off the ground. 

New York’s Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act provides advanced social equity provisions. Like any other state with a legal market, competition is high to obtain licenses and establish dominance in the market. 

But allegations of corruption in the approval process could include both the former governor and the former attorney of Donald Trump.

Weed control is a problem as old as agriculture itself, but two projects from a Cornell AgriTech researcher aim to cultivate new methods for zapping the pesky plants, benefiting organic apple and grape growers and hemp producers in New York state and around the country.

Lynn Sosnoskie, assistant professor in the School of Integrative Plant Science, is collaborating on a $2 million project to study electric weed control in perennial fruit crops. She is also leading a $325,000 weed management study for hemp. Both studies are multi-institution, multistate undertakings that aim to provide growers with evidence-based, location-specific recommendations to suppress weeds and maximize yields.

Both projects began in September, will run for three years and are funded by the USDA’s National Institute for Food and Agriculture.

For the apple and grape study, Sosnoskie and collaborators at Oregon State University and the University of California-Davis, will test the performance, safety and economic and environmental sustainability of electric weed control in organic production. The organic product market topped $60 billion in 2020, and the largest market segment is fresh fruit.

Due to the nature of apple, grape and other perennial fruit plantings, crop rotation and intensive soil disturbance are not viable strategies for weed control. Organic herbicides and mulches can be expensive. Those factors led Sosnoskie and her colleagues to consider a novel weed control tool: electricity. The devices they will be testing essentially electrocute weeds by sending a jolt of electricity through the plant, damaging the plant’s cells and chlorophyll.

In New York City, when they allowed public smoking of marijuana, arrests declined significantly. Sounds like a no brainer — if it’s legal to smoke weed in public, cops can’t arrest you. Except, in some places there are grey areas and cops like to exploit these grey areas to increase arrest records and feel like they are “enforcing the LAW!”

It turns out that all you have to do for cops not to do something is to make it legal. The police is blind to the moral consequences of law — they simply enforce it. You know, like Superior Orders!

However, the issue of public cannabis consumption isn’t limited to New York City; it’s a topic that will most definitely come up in every future legalization debate from now until cannabis is completely integrated into society.

Here, we’ll be addressing this question, the potential fears people expect would happen, and whether this would also apply to tobacco smoke.

The Fears of Public Smoking

The picture that opponents of public smoking would want you to believe is that once you allow public consumption, people would be walking around smoking joints everywhere, all the time.

One thing most people agree on: Federal marijuana legalization is coming.

Arguing over which strains of cannabis are the best is a time-honored tradition. In good company and armed with some basic knowledge on the seemingly endless bounty of cannabis varietals now available, the quest to defend your chosen strain as the best of the bunch is often a largely subjective exercise. But a fun one nonetheless. By contrast, a conversation on which cannabis strains deserve to be considered essential in an overall survey of the plant’s long, strange history is a different matter entirely.

While there are unquestionably many candidates worthy of consideration, telling the story of weed through but a handful of its most seminal specimens is a challenge that quickly yields some obvious answers. Even if your favorite strain is not among the five examples highlighted below, it is likely that one of these featured options is a genetic cousin, forbearer, or offspring to the strains you hold nearest and dearest.

Thus, consider these selections a series of strain stepping stones that collectively offer a brief but pertinent overview of just far cannabis has come — and where it may be headed next.

Panama Red

Before cultivators began breeding cannabis to create new crosses, consumers were smoking exclusively what is known as landrace strains. These varietals were often named for the geographic area in which they naturally grew, which is how we got Panama Red. This classic of the industry is a pure sativa that would go on to became a household name for pot fans in U.S. in the late 1960s, mostly for being widely available at a time when few strains were even on the market. Known for its lengthy flowering time (often at least 11 weeks), the desire to combine the effects of landrace strains with the shorter flowering cycles of cannabis originating from Afghanistan and other similar climates kicked off what would ultimately become a cross-breeding revolution.

Northern Lights

OG Kush

White Widow

Rivaling OG Kush in terms of name recognition is another hybrid that rose to prominence in the ’90s: White Widow. Named for its buds laden with white and crystal resin, there is no actual venom to worry about, however, a highly-potent experience is all but guaranteed from this Netherlands-born heavy-hitter. Derived from a cross between Brazilian indica and South Indian sativa landraces, White Widow has long served as a staple of Dutch coffee shops. Furthermore, the desirable effects of White Widow — often described as a mix of euphoria and energy — makes it no surprise that this strain would soon be utilized to create a host of popular offspring strains, including White Russian and Blue Widow.  

When California legalized cannabis for adult use in 2016, many supporters acknowledged that the War on Drugs had disproportionately impacted communities of color around the state. It was, in fact, one of the selling points of Proposition 64, which went into effect more than a year later. 

On the belief that the ballot initiative didn’t go far enough, though, social equity programs started springing up across the state in recent years to give special privileges to Black, Brown and low-income people who had been arrested and thrown in jail for nonviolent cannabis-related offenses and thereby barred from taking part in the new industry. 

One survey, conducted in 2017 by Marijuana Business Daily, found that about 80 percent of the founders and owners of cannabis businesses at the time were White. 

Neither the city nor the county of San Diego has a social equity program on the books and officials for both say they’re working to create one. By their own admission, they’re late to the game. 

But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, considering that other municipalities in California have tried and failed to correct the injustices they previously identified. In some places, social equity programs have been portrayed as harmful to the same people they were supposed to help. 

Last week, a couple of developments took place at both the state and global levels regarding the regulation of cannabis in regards to it being something that humans put into their bodies.

LABELING GETS SPECIFIC

The Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board issued a policy statement last week clarifying the rules surrounding structure or function claims made about cannabis-infused products. Those are essentially claims about what a product does. For example, a bottle of daily multivitamins may say something about maintaining heart health, or a vitamin C supplement could mention that it supports the immune system. What could not be said, however, is that either product is meant to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

As a matter of fact, when it comes to cannabis, products making structure or function claims — like a CBD tincture formulated for pain relief — must explicitly state on the product's packaging that it is not meant to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

Any packaging that includes a structure or function claim must include this exact phrase, "this statement has not been evaluated by the State of Washington. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease."

The fast-growing marijuana industry is full of opportunities for long-term investors. From growers to retailers to ancillary providers, there's something for every type of investor, no matter their risk tolerance.

While some pot stocks have earned their status as premium buys for long-term investors' portfolios, others have generated significant hype without the businesses or balance sheet growth to support it. Today, we're going to look at two fantastic investments within the marijuana space. Both cannabis stocks have generated significant returns for shareholders and are on track to achieve incredible growth in the years ahead. Let's dive right in.

Two area businesswomen want to open a cannabis growing, manufacturing and retail distribution facility in a building that once housed a Roseland charter school, but some area residents say they object to that kind of business in their neighborhood. Old School Cannabis, which has applied for permission to operate at the site, will be considered by the Santa Rosa Planning Commission during a scheduled meeting Thursday afternoon.

“We want to ... uplift the community and build jobs and uplift the culture,” co-owner and operator Nayeli Rivera said.

Rivera said she is a first-generation immigrant whose parents moved to Sonoma County in the 1970s. She added that she grew up in Petaluma and now lives in Sebastopol.

“Being Mexican-American and being a business owner in the (Roseland) community, I think, is just a wonderful opportunity and I feel very excited and very humbled,” she said. “There’s not many Latinos in cannabis and especially not women.”

Located at 100 Sebastopol Road, the former school building is bordered by industrial facilities to its north and south. Residential neighborhoods are on its other two sides.