Mj news for 06/22/2015

[7greeneyes]

http://www.monroenews.com/news/2015/jun/22/about-half-marijuana-tickets-grand-rapids-going-un/

(Michigan) About half of marijuana tickets in Grand Rapids going unpaid​

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) — Officials in Grand Rapids say about half of the people ticketed for marijuana possession are paying their fines.

The Grand Rapids Press reports more than $100,000 in civil infraction fines has gone uncollected since the drug was decriminalized in the city. Several hundred offenders haven't paid up, prompting the court to consider enforcing the lack of response to tickets as a misdemeanor.

Grand Rapids voters in 2012 decriminalized marijuana use and possession. Instead of a misdemeanor crime, marijuana offenses now are civil infractions. Offenders get a $25 fine for a first offense, $50 for a second offense and $100 for a third offense.

Officials say the court typically collects about 80 percent of civil infraction fines for offenses such as housing code violations, barking dogs and fireworks.

 

[7greeneyes]

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/legal-pot/how-legally-invest-marijuana-companies-n379661

How to Legally Invest in Marijuana Companies​

Score one for the stoners: The pot industry is poised to be gigantic as more states embrace legalization. And, if you want to get in on the ground floor, several advocates say now is the right time to bet big on marijuana.

"Overall public opinion of marijuana has changed," said Dan Humiston, president of the International Cannabis Association. "The stance has just softened. With time as the population ages, a lot of the generations that were really opposed to it are being replaced with the generations that are comfortable with it."

The Wall Street Journal reports that the cannabis industry had a market capitalization of $3 billion as of April. There's currently more than 50 publicly traded pot-related companies. Twenty-four states have legalized medical marijuana, and recreational use for adults has been approved in Washington, Colorado, Alaska, Oregon and Washington, D.C.

With more companies going public every day, the still illegal industry is growing rapidly. New Frontier Financials, a big data shop that focuses on the marijuana industry, estimates that the industry will reach $15.2 billion by 2020. At least seven states are expected to have marijuana legalization initiatives on their 2016 ballots.

Humiston believes that as more states come on board, the hysteria that was overvaluing companies has died down, so prices are more realistic.

It also helps that the stigma of being in the weed business is quickly fading away thanks to celebrities like Tommy Chong creating their own weed brands and high profile investors like Peter Thiel, said media and public relations expert Cheryl Shuman. In January, the PayPal co-founder's Founders Fund took a minority stake in Seattle's Privateer Holdings. The company runs a medical marijuana growing operation in Canada and a pot review site called Leafly.com, among other marijuana-related businesses.

"Investors want to see if an influencer, a trendsetter, a cutting edge individual gets involved," explained Shuman—who calls herself the Martha Stewart of marijuana. "Now I'm getting 10 calls a week."

 

[7greeneyes]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...hat-marijuana-prices-are-crashing-in-colorado

This Survey Says That Marijuana Prices Are Crashing in Colorado​

It's been a little over a year since Colorado began allowing stores to sell marijuana for recreational use and the market continues to grow rapidly. But there are clouds (ahem) on the horizon.

Nicholas Colas and his team at Convergex, a global brokerage company based in New York, surveyed a number of marijuana stores in Colorado last week to get a better picture of the state of the nascent market.

What they found was that prices are declining faster than some had expected, while the number of people visiting the stores has increased.

Here's more from the note:

Since last June, the average price of an 1/8th ounce of recreational cannabis has dropped from $50-$70 to $30-$45 currently; an ounce now sells for between $250 and $300 on average compared to $300-$400 last year. More competition and expansion of grow facilities contributed to this price decline, but it is also a natural result for any maturing industry as dispensaries try to find the market’s equilibrium price.

Even with the declining prices, sales are still exceeding those of last year for recreational marijuana.

According to the note, sales increased by 98 percent year-over-year in April. Taking that into account, Colas expects stores to gross up to $480 million this year, which would be a 50 percent increase over 2014.

One thing his team will be keeping an eye on is the average size of each transaction, as it appears to be decreasing -- perhaps as the novelty value of legally purchasing pot wears off -- as well as a key upcoming date:

Our contacts still report between 100 to 300 customers entering their stores each day, but they only spend about $50 per visit compared to $100 last June. About half of these customers are tourists in most stores we interviewed. ... The 10% sales tax on recreational cannabis will be repealed only on that day (September 16) due to a provision included in a bill Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper signed into law earlier this month. The bill also permanently cuts the 10% sales tax on recreational marijuana to 8% in 2017 in an effort to squeeze out the black market.

Meanwhile, the popularity of legal weed has sparked a fast-growing industry that Colas compares to Silicon Valley. The note talks about a camp called "CannaCamp Mountain Resort," where guests can "hike, zip line, and roast marshmallows, all the while smoking cannabis" (though they have to bring their own. Due to state laws, the camp can't sell to campers directly). The owners of CannaCamp also run two "Bud and Breakfasts."

Here's a look at the story count for "marijuana" going back to 2000 on the Bloomberg Terminal:

click url for graph: http://assets.bwbx.io/images/irnQ1t6iimGU/v1/-1x-1.png

 

[7greeneyes]

http://www.gazettetimes.com/news/st...cle_2e0f6256-9b6b-599d-8027-9ca0f5a38c0f.html

Oregon pharmacy loses license over marijuana prescriptions​

TUMALO, Ore. (AP) — A Tumalo pharmacy is closing after a state licensing board says it manufactured marijuana products, dispensed controlled substances without prescriptions and filled clients' prescriptions at other pharmacies without their knowledge, among other things.

The Bend Bulletin reports (http://bit.ly/1MVE7sd ) that the Oregon Board of Pharmacy placed the Tumalo Pharmacy and its pharmacist under emergency suspension Tuesday while it completes an investigation.

The board says the pharmacy manufactured marijuana products and relabeled a marijuana product as a prescription and took it to a client's care facility, among other findings.

The pharmacy's owners, Doug Forbes and pharmacist Kerri Rosenblatt, have 90 days to formally dispute the findings. Forbes said Friday he plans to dispute the findings and is confident the pharmacy will reopen by the end of the month.

___

Information from: The Bulletin, http://www.bendbulletin.com

 

[7greeneyes]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/22/public-health-service-review_n_7635760.html

White House Takes Huge Step Forward In Fight Over Marijuana Research​

WASHINGTON -- The White House took a major step forward on Monday to support research into the medical properties of marijuana, lifting a much-maligned bureaucratic requirement that had long stifled scientific research.

By eliminating the Public Health Service review requirement, the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), also known as the drug czar's office, will help facilitate research into the drug.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers had called for the requirement to be lifted.

The requirement had long outgrown today's marijuana politics. Even opponents of legalization have called for it to be lifted. As HuffPost's Matt Ferner reported earlier:

"Currently, marijuana research that is not funded by the government must go through a Public Health Service review -- a process established in 1999 by the federal government after a 1998 Institute of Medicine report called for more scientific research into the medical value of marijuana.

It's a process that no other substance classified by the government as Schedule I is subject to and one that researchers and lawmakers alike have criticized.

Under the Controlled Substances Act, the U.S. has five categories for drugs and drug ingredients. Schedule I is reserved for what the DEA considers to have the highest potential for abuse and no medical value. Marijuana has been classified as Schedule I for decades, alongside other substances like heroin and LSD."

Drug czar spokesman Mario Moreno Zepeda said, “The Obama Administration has actively supported scientific research on whether marijuana or its components can be safe and effective medicine. Eliminating the Public Health Service review should help facilitate additional research to advance our understanding of both the adverse effects and potential therapeutic uses for marijuana or its components.”

 

[7greeneyes]

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/846764

Medical Marijuana Laws Don't Encourage Teen Use​

The introduction of state laws allowing the use of marijuana for medical purposes does not lead to an increase in the use of the drug among adolescents within those states, the results of a multiyear nationwide survey reveal.

However, the researchers found that adolescent use of marijuana was higher in those states with medical marijuana laws than in states without such laws.

"Whether medical marijuana laws increase availability through diversion, or change adolescent approval of marijuana, is unknown," the investigators note.

"Irrespective of this point, our findings suggest that medical marijuana laws did not influence these factors sufficiently to raise adolescent marijuana use."

The study was published online June 16 in Lancet Psychiatry.

Reassuring Findings?

Lead author Deborah Hasin, PhD, professor of epidemiology at Columbia University Medical Center, New York City, told Medscape Medical News that one of the main motivators for the this study was the increase in use of marijuana by adolescents in the United States in recent years.

"Because early use of marijuana can have a number of long-term adverse consequences, including cognitive decline if people are using really early and really heavily, it was important to try to find out something about why that increase was happening," she said.

There has been concern that the introduction of state laws regarding marijuana use, particularly those legalizing medical use, would "send out the wrong message" and encourage its use. However, the opposite view has also been expressed, with some people suggesting that it would "turn off" teenagers.

To investigate further, the researchers used data from the Monitoring the Future study, which conducts annual national surveys of children aged 13 to 14 years (8th grade), 15 to 16 years (10th grade), and 17 to 18 years (12th grade) in approximately 400 schools per year.

Data were available for 1,098,270 adolescents who were surveyed between 1991 and 2014 and had completed self-administered questionnaires, including those on marijuana usage.

The team performed multilevel logistic regression modeling, taking into account factors such as individual, school, and state-level characteristics, to determine differences in marijuana usage between the 21 states that had passed a medical marijuana law by 2014 and the remaining 27 contiguous states and whether usage had changed after the passage of the laws.

Marijuana usage in the past 30 days was more prevalent in states that had passed a medical marijuana law than in those that had not, at an adjusted prevalence of 15.87% vs 13.27% (odds ratio [OR], 1.27; P = .057).

Commenting on that finding, Dr Hasin said: "Clearly, for the states to have the difference, regardless of when they passed the law, it seems likely that there would be underlying factors that influence not only a state's likelihood of passing such a law but also the likelihood of use within those states."

"One of the things that we're in the process of investigating now is whether attitudes towards marijuana and its acceptability or beliefs about perceiving marijuana to be harmless or without risk could underlie those changes," she added.

In contrast, the team found that the passing of medical marijuana laws themselves did not have an impact on the prevalence of marijuana usage within those states, at an adjusted prevalence of 16.25% before vs 15.45% after introduction (OR, 0.91; P = .185).

Further analysis revealed that although the passing of medical marijuana laws was not associated with marijuana usage in 10th and 12th graders, there was a significant reduction in usage among 8th graders after the laws were passed. Among 8th graders, usage was reduced from 8.14% beforehand to 6.05% afterwards (OR, 0.73; P < .0001).

The findings were unaffected by redefining marijuana use as any use in the previous year or by the frequency of use, or by taking into account potential delayed effects after the introduction of the law or variations in the provision of dispensaries.

Does Dr Hasin find it reassuring in any way that the passing of medical marijuana laws had no overall effect on adolescent marijuana use? "You know, a lot of people are interpreting the study results that way, and I don't see them as so reassuring," she replied.

"While it doesn't seem that the laws themselves have had this causal effect, the fact is that states are passing them, and teens are using marijuana more, and the use of marijuana, particularly at young ages, can have adverse effects."

"There are some people that can use marijuana without harm, but it does impose a number of risks, so I think that rather than being so reassured by all this, I think that people should see the need to identify the actual causal factors as being particularly acute," she added.

"I think we really need to get to the bottom of what's going on with these increases in use so that we can do something about it."

One issue that the current debate over the legalization of marijuana for medical or recreational use raises is that the laws over marijuana and tobacco smoking seem to be going in opposite directions.

Dr Hasin agreed. "It took a long time and a lot of public education to convince the public that smoking was harmful to health."

Noting that the usage of substances such as alcohol and cocaine has gone up and down over time, she said: "When the prevalence is rather low, people tend to forget or not be aware of the potential risks, so it's only after the prevalence has become quite high and the risks have become so pronounced that they can't be ignored that public policy starts to address the questions."

"I think that if something could be done to try to address the increases in marijuana use that we're seeing at this point...it would be better than waiting until a lot of these adverse consequences have happened."

Global Battle

In an accompanying comment, Kevin Hill, MD, MHS, Division of Alcohol and Drug Abuse, McLean Hospital, Belmont, Massachusetts, described the study as "well designed" and "methodologically sound," noting that it underlines the "importance of undertaking rigorous scientific research to test hypotheses and using the results to develop sensible health policies."

"Globally, there's battle going on over marijuana and whether or not we should have medical marijuana or legalized recreational marijuana," Dr Hill told Medscape Medical News.

"I think one of the main concerns that people have about these policies is that if you are to implement the policies, you're going to have an increase in use, because one of the few things that people on either side of the debate agree upon is that nobody wants more young people using marijuana."

"I think if we're really interested in being truly evidence based, then we need to be able to look at these answers with the evidence, and also change our minds," he added.

"I think that's something that a lot of people aren't willing to do. There are people in both camps, and they have their heels dug in."

Dr Hill believes that the study should encourage people to question whether or not what they had assumed would happen with the introduction of medical marijuana laws is actually true.

However, he doubts that that will indeed be the case. "I'd like to think that people, along with policy, would do that, but I think...we tend to launch forward with certain policies without the science."

Dr Hill concluded: "Policy is ahead of the science in many ways, and this study, for me, really underscores the importance of doing scientifically rigorous research to get the answers to these questions, because, as this study shows, sometimes the answers that we get aren't the ones we were expecting."

The study was funded by the US National Institute on Drug Abuse, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, and the New York State Psychiatric Institute. The authors and Dr Hill have disclosed no relevant relationships.

 

[7greeneyes]

http://smmercury.com/2015/06/21/in-...cutors-just-say-no-to-marijuana-prosecutions/

In pockets of Texas, prosecutors just say no to marijuana prosecutions​

AUSTIN — Texas lawmakers may be reluctant to ease up on punishing small-time pot smokers, but local prosecutors across the state are increasingly looking for ways to keep two-bit toking cases from clogging court dockets and wasting resources.

This past session, seven bills that would have reduced criminal penalties for minor marijuana possession went up in smoke. But some county prosecutors are already choosing to pass on even filing charges when it comes to small pot possession cases, or looking for ways to divert recreational users to probation or community service programs.

Some have been doing so for years.

“The only people who do jail time for marijuana are the people who want to do jail time for marijuana,” said Shannon Edmonds, director of governmental relations for the Texas District and County Attorneys Association.

A little over two years ago, for instance, Cameron County District Attorney Luis Saenz made the call that any marijuana case involving less than one-third of an ounce would never see the inside of a prosecutor’s office.

“I’m not condoning it,” Saenz said of marijuana use. But prosecuting someone over such a small amount of dope just doesn’t make any sense, he said, considering how many police officers and court personnel must work to get that case to trial. All of that effort, for what is now a Class B misdemeanor.

“If I’ve got a hundred bucks to spend, I don’t want to spend $10 for having a joint,” Saenz said. “It’s not good business.”

The result is much-needed relief for court personnel. According to the Office of Court Administration, there’s been a 57 percent drop in misdemeanor marijuana court filings for Cameron County.

Edmonds said there’s no data on exactly how many prosecutors statewide are taking a similar approach.

But many district attorneys try to weed out these minor, nonviolent offenses to keep their court dockets moving by diverting first-time offenders to probation, reducing court costs. If defendants comply with the local jurisdiction’s requirements – which can include holding down a job, a hefty community service component and regular check-ins with a probation office — then the charges are usually dismissed.

“There’s almost no value to the state [prosecutors] or the defense to try a Class B marijuana case,” Edmonds said.

Last October in Houston, the Harris County district’s attorney office rolled out its First Chance Intervention Program in an attempt to break the logjam of roughly 10,000 misdemeanor marijuana filings that hit the historically jammed dockets of Harris County’s misdemeanor courts, which have the feel of a very crowded airport.

“It’s a mess, period,” said Jeff McShan, spokesman for the Harris County DA’s office. “And marijuana was a big problem with that.”

First-time marijuana offenders who opt for First Chance can avoid being charged if they successfully complete eight hours of community service or an eight-hour class, along with regular check-ins with a probation officer.

By April 30, 1,355 first time marijuana offenders took Harris County up on the offer, and so far 767 people have completed the program. Another 415 are still in it, and 128 did not finish.

Already, the impact is being felt on Harris County’s docket.

For the first six months of this current fiscal year, there has been a 20 percent drop in Class B marijuana cases filed in Harris County, compared with the same period for 2014.

Saenz, the Cameron County DA, said he had hoped formally reducing penalties for small-time marijuana use would be one thing the Legislature accomplished this year. “It was one of the few things I agreed with,” he said.

 

[7greeneyes]

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Cannabis-business-gets-higher-and-higher-at-Cow-6339737.php

(California) Cannabis business gets higher and higher at Cow Palace​

Longtime cannabis activist Russ Belville couldn’t be more definitive in delivering his “Marijuana Legalization State of the Union” Saturday.

“The state of the union is stronger than it’s ever been,” Belville said after giving his address at the Cannabis Cup, the marijuana trade show that is expected to draw 16,000 people to the Cow Palace in Daly City through Sunday. Unlike the president’s address delivered annually in Washington, Belville began his by welcoming “the tokers, tokettes and non-toking lovers of liberty.”

There is much to bring a smile to a cannabis supporter these days. With marijuana legal for adult recreational use in four states, and headed to the ballot in the next two years in potentially 10 others, including California, the industry is worth almost $3 billion in the United States.

‘I can barely keep up’

Nowhere is that more evident than at the Cannabis Cup, which isn’t just a trade show but a competition that rewards the best buds, the best edible products and a whole host of other bests that the winners tout as green bragging rights. Steve DeAngelo, a longtime activist and the founder of Oakland’s Harborside Health Center, will receive a lifetime achievement award Sunday.

The first show in the United States was held in San Francisco five years ago, and the event has blossomed to where there will be seven in various states this year.

“I can barely keep up,” said Dan Skye, editor in chief of the 41-year-old High Times Magazine, the monthly that chronicled the high life long before the mainstream embraced it and now sponsors the event.

There’s no trade show in the world like this. Go to a trade show at Moscone Center, and you may get a free T-shirt and a key-chain fob. Here, you get a buzz.

The centerpiece of the event is a fenced-in area where participants holding a medical marijuana card can imbibe, sampling the wares of 416 vendors. Don’t have a card? For a $40, medical professionals will provide an immediate exam to determine whether you need cannabis treatment and provide prospective patients with permission to get inside on the spot, since marijuana is legal in California only for medicinal purposes.

Inside is a marijuana mall of products, from cannabis-infused hot sauce to dog treats to “sugarfree, vegan, non-GMO” edibles to Dank Darts — billed as “the world’s first ever marijuana dart game.” Doesn’t that sound like something you think up when you’re baked?

“Pretty much,” said Dank Darts owner Jenn Delmoral. “But that’s why we did it. The drinkers have beer pong. We should have something, too.”

Vendors showcasing products involved in “dabbing” — a process where users ingest a concentrated form of cannabis in a wax or oil — were prominent.
Popular with younger adults who don’t want to smoke a lot of flower to get a strong buzz, the product has boomed over the past few years. Particularly because you only use half a pea-size amount of the wax — a dab — to get high.

“I've been in the industry 20 years, and nothing has affected it like the dabs,” Tony Van Pelt said as he worked at a tent for a company called I Love Dabs, which sells equipment used in the process. It isn’t cheap — $300 for a complete setup — but the buzz is powerful.

“It’s like the difference between drinking a shot and drinking a beer,” Nate Andreas said after enjoying a dab.

Freedom from stigma

Andreas, who lives in Visalia (Tulare County), enjoys coming to the cannabis shows because “unlike being in a small town, where everything is all hush-hush, here you can openly go up and talk to people about how they do things, how they make things.”

Belville, who has attended almost every Cannabis Cup across the country, sees that. “Maybe not in San Francisco, but in a lot of parts of the country, there’s a stigma about marijuana still.”

As the cannabis industry has boomed, the Cup events have mirrored those changes, Belville said.

“It used to be about the activism,” he said. “Now it is about the business.”

 

[7greeneyes]

http://blog.hreonline.com/2015/06/22/unions-helped-but-now-hurt-cannabis-industry/

UNIONS HELPED, BUT NOW HURT, CANNABIS INDUSTRY​

Yea yea … last week it was drug abuse and addiction. This week it’s marijuana. Trust me, I’ve taken my share of ribbing around the halls 173779091--cannabisof HRE for having seemed to take on the “drug beat.” (Though Mark McGraw’s post on Wednesday about the implications of the Colorado Supreme Court’s Coats v. Dish Network decision may have spared me a few ribs.)

For the record, I’m not obsessed. Nor am I high. (Or funny, I’m sure.) Just hugely intrigued by the growing problem of drugs at work, and the almost explosive ascension of marijuana as a legalized “mind-alterer” and legitimate business. (Here are two recent posts — one late last year, one early this year — and a news analysis in which I’ve examined this phenomenon.)

It’s the business side of marijuana I find most intriguing in this recent piece on the Marijuana Business Daily site. Seems the very union that has nudged this burgeoning cannabis industry along, “helping to pass legislation and regulations that benefit business owners and the movement as a whole,” as the story puts it, is now presenting “canna-business” owners with some challenges.

Actually, the story refers to unions, plural, but the leader of the charge to organize thousands of businesses — dispensaries, infused products companies, ancillary firms and cultivation sites in numerous states including California, Colorado and Minnesota — and to represent even more thousands of employees, from budtenders to growers, is the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, one of the largest labor organizations in the country. UFCW even has a marijuana division along with a parallel website dedicated to promoting unionized marijuana businesses.

Bear in mind, these businesses sprouting up faster than the plants themselves are being run — for the most part — by people who are new to business. Now they’re finding they have to negotiate collective-bargaining agreements, and “that can boost costs, increase red tape, lead to legal issues and create new headaches,” the story says.

Granted, there are positives, too.

As the MBD story notes, in addition to politically partnering with the industry and helping to muscle pro-marijuana legislation through in more than one state, the UFCW’s “experience in moderating employer-employee disputes is an asset, along with systems the union usually proposes to standardize employee reprimands and evaluations.”

Still, it will be interesting — “intriguing,” to quote this very post — to see just how these cannabis start-ups deal with the challenges of working with labor unions.

As industry consultant Todd Mitchem tells MBD:

“When someone’s pro-union in the industry, my question is, ‘What’s the motivation?’ [According to him, there’s not a lot of need in cannabis companies for the traditional watchdog role that unions have played in other industries, such as mining or automotive manufacturing.]

“By and large, this industry wants to play by the rules. You run into a massive divisiveness between the employer and the employee [once unions become part of the equation]. To overlay a union structure onto a fragile industry … is really short-sighted and, in my opinion, risky.”