MJ News for 01/16/2015

[7greeneyes]

http://abcnews.go.com/US/washington-parents-legally-marijuana-accused-child-abuse/story?id=28250280

Washington Parents Legally Using Marijuana Accused of Child Abuse​

While most parents probably want to keep their kids away from marijuana, one mom and dad were accused of child abuse for their avid use of the drug.

“[I use it] pretty much every day,” Jesse Thompson, 30, told ABC News’ “20/20.”

Jesse and his wife Vicca Thompson, are from Sedro-Wolley, Washington, where marijuana use, including recreational, is now legal. The Thompsons are both medical marijuana users with doctor’s prescriptions. Jesse Thompson, a cancer survivor, takes it for pain, while Vicca Thompson, 43, uses it for arthritis and a nervous condition. They run their business, a medical marijuana dispensary and garden store called the Grow Shop, where they sell home-grown strains of marijuana as well as marijuana edibles, and are strong advocates of medical marijuana.

The two are also parents to 5-year-old Jerry and 13-year-old Sohani, Vicca Thompson’s son from a previous marriage. But they insist they are still capable of being responsible parents even when they’re high.

“It just means I have an elevated mood. It doesn’t mean I’m incapacitated or that I can’t think straight,” Vicca Thompson told “20/20.” “I’m on pot right now, and I’m able to parent.”

But there is an apparent gap between the enforcement of child protection laws and marijuana statutes. In many cases, child protection services are taking children away from legal, legitimate users of medical marijuana. Not all types of medical marijuana gets you high, but a lot of it is psycho-active, which can get you high.

“We have irrefutable evidence that it’s damaging for kids,” Dr. Leslie Walker told “20/20.” “Kids who think their parents approve of it are six times more likely to begin using marijuana and begin using much earlier than the average high school age.”

In November 2014, authorities came for the Thompsons’ son Jerry.

The Thompsons said they had an employee that they let go. "About a month later, she … called CPS,” Jesse Thompson said, referring Child Protective Services. “She told them that we not only are feeding our children marijuana all the time, but that they have access to it in our home and in our business.”

Within days of that call, CPS questioned Jerry’s half-brother Sohani, who told authorities that his mom fed him a goo ball. A goo ball, Vicca Thompson explained, is a “peanut butter raisin ball,” medicated with psycho-active marijuana.

“He gets aggressive and is too mean, sometimes ... and just needs to ... look inside and relax,” Vicca Thompson said.

After that, the city quickly shut down the Grow Shop. When CPS requested a meeting with the Thompsons, Jesse asked to wait until their attorney was able to attend. CPS didn’t reschedule the meeting, Jesse Thompson said, and instead, decided to take Jerry away and made him live with an aunt. The Thompsons could only see their son by visiting him at the local CPS office.

“It’s destroying me. I can’t not be with my son. He is all that matters,” Jesse Thompson said of having Jerry taken away.

Vicca Thompson’s son Sohani went to live with his father full-time.

“I felt like my heart might stop,” said Vicca Thompson.

The Thompsons went to court to fight to get Jerry back home. CPS had Jerry take a hair follicle drug test. When the results came back, Jerry tested positive for THC, the psycho-active ingredient in marijuana.

Vicca and Jesse Thompson were accused of posing a risk to Jerry's well-being by feeding marijuana to him. They denied doing so, but Vicca Thompson said she did rub a marijuana salve on his skin to treat a rash, which would not put him at risk of getting high.

After weeks of stilted, supervised meetings with Jerry and numerous hearings, the court commissioner allowed Jerry to come home with the Thompsons on Jan. 7. He stated he saw no other evidence of harm even though there was evidence of THC in Jerry's body.

“The law says there has to be serious physical harm. A child who ingests an edible is not going to suffer serious physical harm,” attorney Jennifer Ani, who has represented a mother who had her child taken away for her legal marijuana use, told “20/20.” “They may go to sleep. They may be out of it. Children can't be removed because of bad judgment. If they could, lots of people wouldn't have kids because we all make mistakes.”

The court commissioner set strict conditions for Jerry’s return home that included making sure he was not exposed to marijuana smoke or edibles in any form. If Jerry were to test positive, the court commissioner said he would not be allowed to live with the Thompsons.

“We’re going to hide the marijuana,” Vicca Thompson said after Jerry returned home. “I definitely feel like I shouldn’t give it to children.”

But Vicca Thompson said if it was legal to give marijuana to children, she would do so.

“If I lived somewhere else and a doctor was looking over me, telling me that it was okay, then I would think, ‘Yeah, it's totally safe,’ especially to put salve on a cut or a rash,” said Vicca Thompson.

 

[7greeneyes]

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/study-marijuana-legalization-big-bucks-vermont-28275544

Study: Marijuana Legalization Could Be Big Bucks for Vermont​

Vermont could reap hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue if it were to legalize marijuana, but only if other nearby states don't also jump on the bandwagon, according to a study released Friday.

The study comes as states across the country increasingly explore the potential budget boost from taxing an underground industry, even while the nascent legal pot business in Colorado and Washington experiences some growing pains.

In Vermont, the Rand Corporation found that revenues from marijuana consumers could, in theory, generate between $20 million and $75 million a year for the state.

The larger figure could be reached through what the report calls "marijuana tourism and illicit exports." It also found that nearly 40 times as many current marijuana consumers live within 200 miles of Vermont than live in the state.

The preface to the report, which does not make a recommendation about whether the state should legalize marijuana, says it is meant to "inform the debate." While it was prepared for Vermont, the report says its conclusions could be useful to other states considering marijuana legalization.

Such high revenues, however, are by no means assured.

"If the federal government intervened to stop such cross-border traffic or if another state in the Northeast decided to legalize marijuana and set lower tax rates, these potential revenues might not materialize," the report said.

"Indeed, because legal marijuana can flow across borders in either direction, Vermont's prospects of deriving considerable tax revenue even from its own residents would become much less promising if one of its immediate neighbors were to legalize with low taxes," it said. "It is not clear that Vermont has any long-run comparative advantage in hosting the industry."

Vermont currently allows the use of medical marijuana and the possession of small amounts of marijuana has been decriminalized. Gov. Peter Shumlin has said he believes the state will follow Washington and Colorado in legalizing it, but he wants to see how it plays out in other states before easing Vermont laws.

The price of marijuana in Washington has plunged since the sky-high prices when post shops opened six months ago, and now growers complain the state is not properly regulating supply.

Regulators in Colorado have capped production to deter weed from spilling into nearby states, but that has meant more demand than supply. And health officials were criticized for an ad campaign to deter teen use that placed human-sized rat cages in downtown Denver.

Last spring the Vermont Legislature passed a law requiring Shumlin's administration to produce a report about the consequences of legalizing marijuana. The House Ways and Means Committee was scheduled to hear to testimony Friday on the taxation and regulation of marijuana after the report's release.

No proposals to legalize marijuana have been introduced in the Legislature.

The report provided few hard answers.

It said that many questions can't be answered in advance, such as whether easing marijuana laws would increase abuse and how to keep it from minors and out of other states.

"There is no recipe for marijuana legalization, nor are there working models of established fully legal marijuana markets," the report said in its closing remarks section. "It must be expected that any initial set of choices will need to be reconsidered in the light of experience, new knowledge, and changing conditions, including federal policy and the policies in neighboring states."

 

[7greeneyes]

http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_27319539/colorado-sets-standard-marijuana-regulation

Guest Commentary: Colorado sets standard for marijuana regulation​

As Oregon and Alaska gear up to implement the will of their voters to legalize recreational cannabis use, they would be well served to look to Colorado for guidance. After years of hearings and task force meetings, Colorado has created a sound template for regulating the retail cannabis industry. It simultaneously balances the need to ensure public safety and creates free market conditions allowing the industry to thrive. While there is still work to be done in certain areas, we are on a solid path forward.

This historic feat was accomplished, in part, because government leaders avoided the temptation to regulate in a bubble — instead, they actively welcomed industry input on the rules that shaped how Colorado's foray into cannabis legalization would play out. That collaboration continues to this day, resulting in a set of industry regulations that can nimbly address the unforeseen needs of this market.

All eyes were on Colorado at the beginning of 2014, as the first legal sales of non-medical marijuana in the United States to adults 21 years or older happened in Denver. While just a handful of retail stores opened that day, there are now more than 300 statewide. There's a total of about 750 retail and medical stores now. Colorado collected more than $36 million in tax revenue (through October) on the sale of $121.6 million worth marijuana. As far as jobs, there were 5,492 people licensed to work in a cannabis business at the end of 2013. Colorado's Marijuana Enforcement Division issued 18,666 licenses to workers by September. That doesn't include job growth in industries supporting cannabis, like construction, lighting and security companies.

With two additional states and Washington, D.C., approving full adult-use legalization in November, and at least six other states pursuing adult-use legislation in 2016, industry analysts are predicting $8 billion in cannabis sales nationwide by 2018. Many will rightly look to Colorado as the gold standard for cannabis industry regulation.

The non-partisan research organization Brookings Institution in a July 2014 report, titled "Colorado's Rollout of Marijuana is Succeeding," praised the state's strong regulatory framework for the cannabis industry:

"Colorado's early implementation decisions will be considered the Colorado Model; that model will inform and influence marijuana policy, potentially, for years to come."

Those next in line to regulate cannabis sales should follow the lessons of Colorado and not fear a robust process that includes the voices of the regulated community. Companies entering the market should not run from regulation.

The Brookings report continued: "Much of this report has praised the innovation, professionalism, competence, leadership, and execution of the implementation of marijuana legalization in Colorado. The broad success of the state in putting into effect a policy that had no true precedent was a difficult task, and Colorado largely did well."

To be sure, there is room for improvement, as with any new law. But Colorado is confronting this matter directly, and its approach of bringing responsible players in this industry to the table, as opposed to continued ostracization of an industry seeking to come into the daylight, will ensure the harmonious and responsible co-existence of cannabis in our 21st century society.

 

[7greeneyes]

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/01/16/washington-state-growers-struggling-to-sell-legal-marijuana/

Washington state growers struggling to sell legal marijuana​

SEATTLE – Washington's legal marijuana market opened last summer to a dearth of weed. Some stores periodically closed because they didn't have pot to sell. Prices were through the roof.

Six months later, the equation has flipped, bringing serious growing pains to the new industry.

A big harvest of sun-grown marijuana from eastern Washington last fall flooded the market. Prices are starting to come down in the state's licensed pot shops, but due to the glut, growers are — surprisingly — struggling to sell their marijuana. Some are already worried about going belly-up, finding it tougher than expected to make a living in legal weed.

"It's an economic nightmare," says Andrew Seitz, general manager at Dutch Brothers Farms in Seattle.

State data show that licensed growers had harvested 31,000 pounds of bud as of Thursday, but Washington's relatively few legal pot shops have sold less than one-fifth of that. Many of the state's marijuana users have stuck with the untaxed or much-lesser-taxed pot they get from black market dealers or unregulated medical dispensaries — limiting how quickly product moves off the shelves of legal stores.

"Every grower I know has got surplus inventory and they're concerned about it," said Scott Masengill, who has sold half of the 280 pounds he harvested from his pot farm in central Washington. "I don't know anybody getting rich."

Officials at the state Liquor Control Board, which regulates marijuana, aren't terribly concerned.

So far, there are about 270 licensed growers in Washington — but only about 85 open stores for them to sell to. That's partly due to a slow, difficult licensing process; retail applicants who haven't been ready to open; and pot business bans in many cities and counties.

The board's legal pot project manager, Randy Simmons, says he hopes about 100 more stores will open in the next few months, providing additional outlets for the weed that's been harvested. Washington is always likely to have a glut of marijuana after the outdoor crop comes in each fall, he suggested, as the outdoor growers typically harvest one big crop which they continue to sell throughout the year.

Weed is still pricey at the state's pot shops — often in the $23-to-$25-per-gram range. That's about twice the cost at medical dispensaries, but cheaper than it was a few months ago.

Simmons said he expects pot prices to keep fluctuating for the next year and a half: "It's the volatility of a new marketplace."

Colorado, the only other state with legal marijuana sales, has a differently structured industry. Regulators have kept a lid on production, though those limits were loosened last fall as part of a planned expansion of the market. Colorado growers still have to prove legal demand for their product, a regulatory curb aimed at preventing excess weed from spilling to other states. The result has been more demand than supply.

In Washington, many growers have unrealistic expectations about how quickly they should be able to recoup their initial investments, Simmons said. And some of the growers complaining about the low prices they're getting now also gouged the new stores amid shortages last summer.

Those include Seitz, who sold his first crop — 22 pounds — for just under $21 per gram: nearly $230,000 before his hefty $57,000 tax bill. He's about to harvest his second crop, but this time he expects to get just $4 per gram, when he has big bills to pay.

"We're running out of money," he said. "We need to make sales this month to stay operational, and we're going to be selling at losses."

Because of the high taxes on Washington's legal pot, Seitz says stores can never compete with the black market while paying growers sustainable prices.

He and other growers say it's been a mistake for the state to license so much production while the rollout of legal stores has lagged.

"If it's a natural bump from the outdoor harvest, that's one thing," said Jeremy Moberg, who is sitting on 1,500 pounds of unsold marijuana at his CannaSol Farms in north-central Washington. "If it's institutionally creating oversupply ... that's a problem."

Some retailers have been marking up the wholesale price three-fold or more — a practice that has some growers wondering if certain stores aren't cleaning up as they struggle.

"I got retailers beating me down to sell for black-market prices," said Fitz Couhig, owner of Pioneer Production and Processing in Arlington.

But two of the top-selling stores in Seattle — Uncle Ike's and Cannabis City — insist that because of their tax obligations and low demand for high-priced pot, they're not making any money either, despite each having sales of more than $600,000 per month.

Aaron Varney, a director at Dockside Cannabis, a retail shop in the Seattle suburb of Shoreline, said stores that exploit growers now could get bitten in the long run.

"Right now, the numbers will say that we're in the driver's seat," he said. "But that can change. We're looking to establish good relationships with the growers we're dealing with."

 

[7greeneyes]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...-absurd-fight-to-block-medical-marijuana.html

Illinois’ Absurd Fight to Block Medical Marijuana​

650 Illinois residents are approved to buy medical cannabis in the state. With no available marijuana and little government support, they may be waiting indefinitely.

Illinois’ former Gov. Pat Quinn legalized medical cannabis in the Prairie State on Aug. 1, 2013. One year, five months, and 12 days later, not a single patient has received it.

The line of those waiting to take advantage of the program is long: 650 people and growing. Suffering from one of 34 “debilitating medical conditions,” ranging from glaucoma to HIV, they’ve earned the right to purchase cannabis for medical use. The problem? There is none.

While the process has been an arduous one from the start, many were optimistic that Quinn, who departed from office for good Monday, would fix this problem. He left without mentioning it. Now, with a new governor who says he would have vetoed the bill, the program seems destined for collapse.

Can Illinois save its medical marijuana patients?

***
While the actual growing of marijuana is vital to a medical cannabis operation, it’s not the hard part. Getting approval to take it is the real hurdle.

Doctors for the 650 people that have been approved thus far successfully convinced the state of Illinois that, for these patients, cannabis is medicine. In a nation that still considers marijuana a drug with zero medical value, that’s no easy task. It took mounds of paperwork, years of doctor’s appointments, and decades of suffering to prove that this drug can change their lives. Now that they finally have, there’s nowhere to get it.

For Marla Levi, a 51-year-old with multiple sclerosis so severe she’s in constant pain, the delay is devastating. “We are just flabbergasted at this point,” Levi tells me on the phone. “I have my approval letter ready. I’ve been fingerprinted. I’ve paid the fee, and it does me absolutely no good. It’s useless.”

It was 1996, while a high-powered VP of sales at an insurance agency, when Levi first noticed symptoms of her illness. Numbness in her feet came first (“My shoes were too tight when doing aerobics”), followed by a similar feeling in her calves. But it was a trip to London when things got worse. “I kept falling,” she says. “My knees would just buckle.” Months later, after doctors determined it was multiple sclerosis, “everything went south.”

At night, severe muscle pain steals her sleep. In the daytime, her left hand makes a fist that she cannot unclench. With cannabis, the pain nearly disappears.

A brutal, long-lasting disease, those with MS suffer severe nerve damage at the behest of their own immune system, which attacks the fatty acid—myelin—that lines the nerves. In a matter of months, Levi says using her legs became difficult—prompting a cane, then a walker, then a wheelchair. She had to quit work and hire around the clock help.

Twenty years later, her suffering is excruciating. At night, severe muscle pain steals her sleep. In the daytime, her left hand makes a fist that she cannot unclench. With cannabis, the pain nearly disappears. Her hand relaxes. Her shoulders and back loosen. “I’m considering moving to another state,” she says. “I think we all are.”

Unlike prior states with medical marijuana issues, it’s neither the list of covered conditions, nor a lack of physicians that has caused the impasse. It is, quite simply, the lack of cannabis. Exactly zero dispensaries have made it through the bureaucratic hurdles needed to win approval for growing. Zero. Not only is there no medical cannabis available for purchase now, but there’s none growing.

The Compassionate Use of Medical Cannabis Pilot Program Act (HB1), a 49-page document, outlines the qualifications for becoming a registered medical marijuana patient in the state. In another section of the document, a patient’s allowable “adequate supply,” is defined as “2.5 ounces of usable cannabis… derived solely from an intrastate source.”

The last day for the dispensaries and cultivation experts to apply for one of the 21 licenses the state plans to issue was Sept. 22, 2014. That means the Illinois Department of Agriculture has had more than three months to grade the 159 applications they received.

Dan Linn, executive director of the Illinois Chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), says it’s unclear why no dispensaries have won approval to grow. “There isn’t really a solid definitive answer,” he says.

Two theories about why the licenses remain outstanding abound. The first: The applications have already been scored and are merely sitting on a desk waiting to be awarded. The second: that the Illinois’ DOA is overwhelmed sorting through the applications to grow a plant that is, ultimately, foreign. “If licenses are just waiting to be issued, there could be a lot of political issues there,” Linn says. “If they haven’t been processed that would be a more realistic answer.”

Exactly zero dispensaries have made it through the bureaucratic hurdles needed to win approval for growing. Zero.

Regardless of the answer, Linn says the shifting timeline of the program has patients incensed. When the initial application for licenses began in September, the state set the tentative deadline for awarding them as the end of the fiscal year. When 2014 came and went, many viewed the impending departure of Gov. Quinn as the perfect time to release the licenses. But when Quinn left Monday without so much as a mention of the outstanding licenses, citizens began to worry.

“People are definitely frustrated, the patients are really upset that they are waiting,” says Linn. On top of patients, business owners are now paying for facilities that they are unable to use. “They’re losing money every day,” says Linn.

Residents worry the situation will grow bleaker now with Gov. Bruce Rauner, who was quoted in September saying he would have vetoed HB1. This week, Illinois Rep. Lou Lang spoke out against Quinn’s decision, and expressed concern about the future. “This single failure may doom the medical cannabis program,” Lang said. “[It] said to all of those folks that made applications to be cultivators or dispensary owners that we took your $5 million but we’ll get to you when we feel like it.”

Lang characterizes Quinn’s move (or lack thereof) as a betrayal to the citizens. “The state of Illinois has a responsibility to fulfill its obligations under the law,” he said Tuesday. “We did not do that.”

For Levi and other patients like her, it’s the stories of the littlest among them—children with epileptic seizures—that leaves her speechless. “Babies [and] little kids that have 100 seizures a day, they take cannabis and it stops,” she says. “How can any politician say no to that? It’s sick.”

 

[7greeneyes]

http://www.komonews.com/news/local/...from-medical-marijuana-candies-288790621.html

Health officials move to protect kids from medical marijuana candies​

SEATTLE -- Marijuana edibles are blamed for a recent spike in child overdose cases, and now King County health officials are calling for a pot candy crackdown.

Joe McDermott, chair of the King County Board of Health, introduced a resolution this week to help protect children who might mistake potent "medibles" as sugary treats.

"The resolution before us calls on the Washington State Legislature to use their authority this session to regulate the medical marijuana market in alignment with the rules established for the recreational marijuana market," McDermott said.

Bringing medical regulations in line with retail rules could result in a ban on many of the products currently sold at dispensaries. The goal is eliminate things that would be "especially appealing to children." There is no list of such items, but pot-infused cotton candy, gummy bears, lollipops and similar items would likely fall into this category, according to staff at the state Liquor Control Board, which regulates the recreational market.

Ice creams are among dozens of options Shy Sadis sells at The Joint, a medical marijuana dispensary in Clearview. The items are popular with patients who use medical marijuana but don't want to smoke it, Sadis said.

In addition to buds and oils, shelves at The Joint are also lined with baked goods, sodas and suckers - all of them steeped in pot. The vendors who supply the products are also licensed and authorized food handlers, Sadis said, and he makes sure packaging and labeling meet certain standards.

However, despite stocking these pot-infused candies, Sadis said he supports efforts to eliminate products that appeal to children. In exchange, he'd like the medical marijuana industry to get the legal recognition it currently lacks.

"We've never had guidelines," he said. "It's been the Wild, Wild West for the last five years."

Sadis believes the medical marijuana industry needs more regulation, and he's open to following the same rules imposed on retail stores.

"We just want to figure out if medical is going to stay or if it's going to go," he said. "We're tired of hearing everybody is going to get shut down."