WeedLife News Network

Sapphire Medical Foundation has announced its first patient has secured medicine funding for one year.

Two years following the rescheduling of cannabis-based medicinal products in the UK, Sapphire Medical Foundation has announced its first patient has successfully proceeded through the grant making processes and has seen a clinical specialist who has confirmed eligibility for treatment with cannabis-based medicines.

Sapphire Medical Foundation will fund the treatment for at least one year. The Foundation is the first of its kind and was set up to reduce the financial barriers of access to medical cannabis where clinically appropriate for those who are unable to afford potentially life-changing treatment.

Securing medical cannabis in the UK

The majority of UK medical cannabis patients receive prescriptions through the private sector and with limited access on the NHS, many prospective patients are unable to afford the prohibitive costs associated with a prescription.

38-year-old Kirran, who suffers with debilitating chronic pain due to fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis, has been selected to have her treatment funded following application through the first grant round.

Ergonomics and the associated employer requirements to maintain safe workplaces, especially in industries where repetitive motion injuries are common, are at the forefront of modern claim prevention. However, the legal cannabis industry could be especially vulnerable.

As a legalization shift sweeps the nation, responsible cannabis growers in California are uniquely positioned to lead the way, while others either comply or face hefty penalties.

Inhaling hot smoke during the summer is not the most pleasant of activities. Here are 5 things you can do to get high while battling the heat.

While in the midst of a pandemic, summer has become even more special, providing some much needed escape for people who want to leave their homes and hang out in the open air without fear of cluttered spaces with poor ventilation that facilitate stress and the spread of the virus.

Smoking weed in the summer is tough, especially on those really hot days. While there are some people who don’t mind smoking when it’s 90 degrees out, a lot of people prefer to have something cool that makes them feel like they’re not melting. Still, there are a dozen ways to consume weed and making the most of the summer without inhaling hot smoke.

Here are 5 ways to enjoy cannabis during the warmer months:

Smoke near air conditioning

While it’s nice to take advantage of the season and of those really warm days, sometimes it’s okay to stay home and enjoy your AC unit. Beach days are great, but so are days spent getting high, watching a good movie or playing a board game, preparing a meal, reading a book, etc. Weed is flexible like that.

Thanks to antioxidants, CBD can help fight free-radical damage and even reduce some of your wrinkles. That’s why skincare companies often include the compound in their products.

Hoping to turn back the clock a few years?

OK, that may be scientifically impossible, but thanks to CBD, you may be able to take a few years off of your skin. It’s true! Thanks to antioxidants, CBD can help fight free-radical damage and even reduce some of your wrinkles. That’s why skincare companies everywhere are starting to include CBD in their products.

Of course, CBD isn’t a miracle worker and more research is needed to confirm its anti-aging properties. In the meantime, here’s everything you need to know about CBD and anti-aging, and how it can help you look and feel your best as you continue to blow out more candles on your birthday cake.

Photo by JGI/Jamie Grill/Getty Images

The Dutch government has clarified some of the finer details of its new application to legally cultivate recreational cannabis.

As a part of a new experiment in the Netherlands to legalize the production of cannabis and its sale in coffee shops in the country, only applicants with the capability to produce a minimum of 6,500 kilograms per year will be considered, reports Marijuana Business Daily. That said, growers won’t necessarily be on the hook to produce that much.

With the new application, would-be cannabis growers in the Netherlands will have a lot more red tape to deal with in order to be licensed for production, including a background check and permission from the mayor of the jurisdiction where the cultivation is planned.

Legal growers will also need to buy seeds from licensed sellers and will be supplied with mandatory track-and-trace software provided by the government.

Despite it being a crazy year, Americans can't lose sight of the fact that Election Day is a little over three months away. At stake are 435 seats in the House of Representatives, roughly a third of all seats in the Senate, and, of course, the Oval Office.

But it's an equally important election at the state level. No matter what happens federally, it's unlikely that marijuana's scheduling will be changed anytime soon. This means state-level cannabis legalizations will continue to play a major role in growing the U.S. pot industry.

This coming November, residents of three states are guaranteed to be voting on a cannabis measure in their respective states. However, four additional states may join.

New Jersey: Will be on the ballot

While there's no such thing as a lock when it comes to voting on the legalization of marijuana, New Jersey's constitutional amendment that aims to legalize adult-use marijuana appears to have a very good chance at passing. According to an April survey from Monmouth University, 61% of New Jerseyans would be in favor of a statewide legalization of cannabis. 

If approved, New Jersey would likely be on its way to approaching $1 billion in annual sales by the midpoint of this decade. Curaleaf Holdings (OTC:CURL.F), which leads all U.S. multistate operators in terms of total operating dispensaries (57), would certainly welcome this legalization. Curaleaf already has a presence in the Garden State's medical marijuana industry, and it would likely be able to pivot its existing infrastructure to take advantage of adult-use weed sales within the state.

A highly regarded British think-tank focused on reforming drug laws thinks Canada’s legalisation and regulation of cannabis has gone well.

Transform Drug Policy Foundation has been monitoring Canadian reform efforts for some time, and advised the Canadian Government and some provinces on how to develop regulations prior to legalisation. Its positive views of Canada’s initiatives is a significant contribution in assessing our journey away from criminalisation of simple possession and use of recreational drugs.

There have been a number of efforts at assessing our first year of legalisation and beyond. Not all of them have been as positive as Transform’s evaluations.

The think-tank’s accounting is sophisticated but also provides a primer of Canada’s experiences with legal cannabis, the provision of which was deemed an essential service in Ontario during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Transform’s assessment delves into the fundamentals — growing, processing and producing. The diverse ways the drug is sold to consumers in the provinces and territories is summarised succinctly and clearly.

In November of 2019, a Pew Research study revealed that 9 out of 10 Americans favor legalization of either medical or recreational/adult-use marijuana. As a political issue, the study found that a majority of Republicans – 55% - and a majority of Democrats – 78% - were in favor of legalization. American voters no longer believe marijuana should remain a criminalized, Schedule I substance. This is not shocking. The people have spoken, the money is flowing, and the globe keeps on spinning. 

Blockchain is the cannabis industry’s answer for stealing market share from the unlicensed market.

While we wait for government regulators to catch up to the speeding train called cannabis innovation, consumers need protection from rogue growers and distributors. Blockchain is capable of many use cases, but it’s a perfect fit for supply chain management.

So what is blockchain? Blockchain is a digital ledger that records and tracks data and physical assets from point A to B in the supply chain. The information on the blockchain is cryptographically secure and tamper-proof—which means that no one can change data once it has been entered and verified.

The blockchain technology can strengthen consumer confidence in the cannabis industry by verifying product origin, compliance, seed verification, proof of ownership, cultivating and manufacturing processes, transactional information, location tracking, and supply chain paper trail.

Let’s break it down:

Despite the fact that CBD makes a lot of money for both big and independent companies, a surprising amount of people don’t know what the compound does or where it comes from. No matter if you think it’s crazy that someone will swallow or put something on their bodies without knowing what it does, we have to recognize that the CBD industry is confusing. It’s common and okay for people to be a little bit unsure.

Here are 5 of the most popular questions people have Googled about CBD topicals:

What is the purpose of CBD lotions? 

Photo by Linda Prebreza via Pexels

CBD lotions can be used for a wide variety of medicinal conditions and, depending on the other components in the lotion, can produce myriad results. CBD is primarily known for its anti-inflammatory effects, which is why there are so many CBD lotions designed to target chronic pain, arthritis, eczema and the like.

How many mg of CBD should be present in the topical in order to have some effect?

Photo by Toa Heftiba via Unsplash

The legalization of marijuana for Washington state adults may be thwarting a steady downward trend in teen marijuana use, according to new research from the University of Washington.

The longitudinal study of more than 230 teens and young adults finds that teens may be more likely to use marijuana following legalization—with the proliferation of stores and increasing adult use of the drug—than they otherwise would have been.

"When we think about marijuana legalization, a worry is that underage use may go up," said Jennifer Bailey, the study's lead author and principal investigator with the Social Development Research Group in the UW School of Social Work. "Early use and heavy use during adolescence can have a lot of negative health consequences, then and later in life, so we don't want teen use to be going up."

Bailey notes that before marijuana legalization, rates of teen marijuana use and other drug use had both been decreasing over the last couple of decades.

The study was published July 9 in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

According to a new study published in the journal Addiction, neither the current nor the cumulative lifetime use of marijuana is associated with heart abnormalities at middle age. The study, first reported on by NORML, is titled Association between marijuana use and electrocardiographic abnormalities by middle age.

For the study researchers from Switzerland and the United States examined the relationship between cumulative marijuana use and the prevalence of electrocardiogram (ECG) abnormalities in a group of 2,585 middle age subjects. “Researchers controlled for several potential confounders, including subjects’ use of alcohol and tobacco, as well as blood pressure and cholesterol levels.”

Investigators reported: “We found no evidence that current or lifetime cumulative use of marijuana was associated with a higher prevalence or incidence of major or minor ECG abnormalities in this cohort, … although major ECG abnormalities seemed to be less frequent in current marijuana users. … Whether participants used marijuana daily, in the last 30 days or intermittently over a lifetime, marijuana use was not associated with an increase in prevalent or incident specific ECG abnormalities by middle-age.”

They concluded by stating that “Our finding that occasional marijuana was not associated with ECG abnormalities adds to the growing body of evidence that this level of marijuana use and CVD [cardiovascular disease] events and markers of subclinical atherosclerosis are not associated.”

One of the most controversial and sensitive topics when it comes to cannabis is cannabis use during pregnancy. That is true regardless of what country someone is in.

All responsible parents (or soon to be parents) want to do what is best for their child. That, of course, is coupled with doing what is best for pregnant mothers’ health as well.

After all, the overall health of the pregnant mother is a major factor in determining the overall health of the developing baby.

For many years it was generally accepted that any cannabis use during pregnancy was bad. However, a growing body of evidence is calling that absolutist position into question.

Data Analysis Shows Mixed Results

Researchers at Ohio State University College of Medicine analyzed data regarding maternal cannabis exposure and the risk of premature birth (prior to 37 weeks of pregnancy).

The New York State Senate approved a bill on Tuesday that would grant housing protections for registered medical marijuana patients. The measure, S.4117, “prohibits the eviction of tenants for using medical marijuana for a certified medical use,” according to a summary of the bill.

S.4117 was originally introduced in the New York State Senate by Democratic Sen. Anna Kaplan in February 2019. The bill was approved by the Senate in April of that year and referred to the State Assembly, where it died in January 2020.

That sent the measure back to the Senate, where it was passed again by the chamber this week by a vote of 58 to 2. The bill has been referred again to the State Assembly, where it has been assigned to the Housing Committee for consideration as A.7764.

“This legislation would seek to ensure that tenants lawfully using medical marihuana are protected from eviction proceedings,” a memo accompanying the Assembly version of the legislation cites as justification for its passage.

Elderly Patient Evicted

The legislative memo goes on to relate the story of a 78-year-old man from Niagara Falls who was evicted from his residence because he used medical marijuana for pain management. The eviction was made on the grounds that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development “prohibits and has a strict policy of allowing and evicting individuals who use marihuana.”

How the Cannabis Industry can Continue to Benefit America

Analysts are projecting that the U.S. cannabis industry could add as much as $130 billion into the economy within the next half-decade. This may seem like a lot, but given where marijuana stocks have already taken the market, it begins to make more sense. A new study showed that cannabis sales alone have shot up to around $50 billion as of last year.

Interest in medical cannabis oil has increased exponentially in recent years as news stories about suffering patients finding relief from the substance have spread to virtually every corner of the planet.

Medical cannabis has been found by many suffering patients to be safe and effective at treating their condition(s).

That is true for all types of ailments, including and especially severe seizures caused by epilepsy which seems to be a condition that is particularly responsive to this type of therapy.

In the United Kingdom, government health workers are considering manufacturing their own medical cannabis oil.

Is that a good idea? Will it help?

The recent study was conducted at the St Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne, Australia, and the Emerald Clinics (EMD) in Perth, suggests cannabis is a safe option for patients to integrate into their current pain treatment.

That includes patients who already consume high doses of opioids.

The company administered its ZTL-103, a 1:1 THC/CBD formulation to chronic pain (non-cancer) patients who used at least 60 milligrams of morphine or similar opioids daily. After a two-week dosing period, patients reported reduced levels of pain, stress, depression and anxiety, while experiencing no serious side effects.

“This study not only reinforces that cannabis can be safely administered in increasing amounts to treat pain, but can be safely taken concurrently with high daily doses of opioids,” says Zelira CEO Dr. Oludare Odumosu. “These promising results lay the groundwork for our further study on pain management among retired athletes.”

This trial aimed to assess the safety of Zelira’s cannabis formulation, ZTL-103, in patients with chronic pain who are already on long-term, high-dose opioid treatment. 

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration released preliminary guidance on Tuesday on cannabis-related clinical research, outlining how companies seeking approval of drugs that contain cannabis or its derivatives must follow the traditional drug review and approval process involving clinical trials.

The agency is still working on rules for products that contain the cannabis ingredient CBD, which is widely held to have wellness properties but lacks research to support that view. Many companies are keen to market food, drinks and dietary supplements containing CBD, a non-psychoactive ingredient in the hemp plant, that they say can help with ailments such as anxiety.

As cries to “defund the police” reverberate across the country, cities are looking at ways to shift funds from policing into communities. In California, tax revenues from marijuana should be a clear point of entry. When voters legalized cannabis in 2016, they expected the taxes would be invested in communities that were adversely impacted by the war on drugs. Instead, a new report finds that these revenues are actually funding the police.

The report, California Cannabis Tax Revenues: A Windfall for Law Enforcement or An Opportunity for Healing, which was authored by Youth Forward and Getting It Right from the Start, looks at 28 cities across California that collect cannabis-related tax revenue. It turns out that from the time Proposition 64 was passed to fiscal year 2019-20, 23 of the 28 cities analyzed saw double-digit increases in the amount of general-fund money going into their police budgets. Eight of the 28 cities saw their police budgets grow by at least 25 percent. Overall, the average shift in police budgets for these 28 cities was an increase of 19 percent over that three-year period.

One reason for this is that the revenue collected from cannabis in nearly all these cities (the one exception being Shasta Lake) goes into the general fund, where the largest chunk of spending goes toward police departments. Another reason is that a number of cities are directing these tax revenues toward special units focused on cannabis enforcement, setting the stage for a war on drugs 2.0.

Law enforcement is now beginning to “crack down” on unlicensed vendors, most of whom are people of color. For example, San Diego uses cannabis tax revenues for “enforcement of marijuana laws” and “proactively cracking down on illegal operators.” And Los Angeles allocates millions of their revenues toward the police overtime fund to “investigate and enforce laws relative to illegal cannabis businesses” among other law enforcement functions.

The tragic irony of this is that cannabis tax revenues are now continuing the historic pattern of arrests for nonviolent drug offenses that have disproportionately harmed communities of color for decades. As recently as 2013, Black people were arrested more than twice as often as white people for cannabis offenses, and by 2018 people of color comprised 75 percent of cannabis arrests. Though marijuana use is roughly equal among Blacks and whites, Blacks are nearly 4 times as likely to be arrested for marijuana possession.

A second medical cannabis company has filed a petition asking a state district judge to invalidate rules recently enacted by the New Mexico Department of Health. 

Pecos Valley Production, a medical cannabis company with dispensaries in the southern part of the state, filed a petition Monday in state district court calling for an annulment of regulatory rules that lawyers for the company called “arbitrary and capricious.”

The petition from Pecos Valley argues similar points as one filed last week, on behalf of cannabis producer and manufacturer Ultra Health. Both petitions are filed under the same case.

Lawyers for Ultra Health, one of which is Brian Egolf, who also serves as the state’s Speaker of the House, argued that the Medical Cannabis Program and the DOH failed to show reasoning for new rules. Ultra Health’s lawyers also accused the state of copying regulations from other states that have a medical cannabis program like Oregon and Colorado. 

The petition from Pecos Valley Production also accused the state of adopting rules from other states instead of properly consulting with medical cannabis producers in New Mexico.