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Marijuana is rapidly becoming a big, semi-legal business across the country, with $5.7 billion in sales last year and tens of thousands of people working and paying taxes as they cultivate, package and sell cannabis. Colorado, Alaska, Oregon, Washington state and Washington, D.C. have all legalized adult recreational use, and 23 states and the District of Columbia permit some form of medical use. That’s despite the fact that marijuana remains an illegal drug and Schedule 1 controlled substance at the federal level.
The findings “show that cannabis was not safe for the long-term users tracked in our study,” University of California/Davis Associate Professor Magdalena Cerdá, the study’s lead researcher, said in a press release. “Alcohol is still a bigger problem than cannabis because alcohol use is more prevalent than cannabis use,” Cerda added. “But as the legalization of cannabis increases around the world, the economic and social burden posed by regular cannabis use could increase as well,” she said.
Researchers found that regular cannabis smokers “ended up in a lower social class than their parents, with lower-paying, less skilled and less prestigious jobs than those who were not regular cannabis smokers." "These regular and persistent users also experienced more financial, work-related and relationship difficulties, which worsened as the number of years of regular cannabis use progressed,” according to the press release. “Regular long-term users also had more antisocial behaviors at work, such as stealing money or lying to get a job, and experienced more relationship problems, such as intimate partner violence and controlling abuse.” “Our data indicate that persistent cannabis users constitute a burden on families, communities, and national social-welfare systems. Moreover, heavy cannabis use and dependence was not associated with fewer harmful economic and social problems than was alcohol dependence.”
The study, “Persistent Cannabis Dependence and Alcohol Dependence Represent Risks for Midlife Economic and Social Problems: A Longitudinal Cohort Study,” was published March 23 by the journal Clinical Psychological Science. It was co-authored by nine researchers from five universities, including four in the United States and one in England. The 947 study subjects were taken from a group of 1,037 members of the Dunedin Longitudinal Study, individuals born in Dunedin, New Zealand in 1972 to 1973, who have undergone assessments from the age of 5 to 38. Using the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the study categorized their cannabis use from “never used” to “persistent dependence,” defined as use on four or more days per week.
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That's debatable but even if true it's our choice what we do with our lives. The op makes a great point that instead of funding the black market we can be boosting our economy and clearing our jails. These funds can go towards effective methods like education and rehab that can actually make a difference with drug useGranny says, "Dat's right - an' it'll make ya goofy - like Uncle Ferd...
Study: Heavy Pot Users Face As Many Midlife Troubles As Those Dependent on Alcohol
April 19, 2016 | Smoking marijuana regularly is linked to as many economic and social problems in early midlife as being dependent on alcohol, a recently published international study has found.
The findings “show that cannabis was not safe for the long-term users tracked in our study,” University of California/Davis Associate Professor Magdalena Cerdá, the study’s lead researcher, said in a press release. “Alcohol is still a bigger problem than cannabis because alcohol use is more prevalent than cannabis use,” Cerda added. “But as the legalization of cannabis increases around the world, the economic and social burden posed by regular cannabis use could increase as well,” she said.
Researchers found that regular cannabis smokers “ended up in a lower social class than their parents, with lower-paying, less skilled and less prestigious jobs than those who were not regular cannabis smokers." "These regular and persistent users also experienced more financial, work-related and relationship difficulties, which worsened as the number of years of regular cannabis use progressed,” according to the press release. “Regular long-term users also had more antisocial behaviors at work, such as stealing money or lying to get a job, and experienced more relationship problems, such as intimate partner violence and controlling abuse.” “Our data indicate that persistent cannabis users constitute a burden on families, communities, and national social-welfare systems. Moreover, heavy cannabis use and dependence was not associated with fewer harmful economic and social problems than was alcohol dependence.”
The study, “Persistent Cannabis Dependence and Alcohol Dependence Represent Risks for Midlife Economic and Social Problems: A Longitudinal Cohort Study,” was published March 23 by the journal Clinical Psychological Science. It was co-authored by nine researchers from five universities, including four in the United States and one in England. The 947 study subjects were taken from a group of 1,037 members of the Dunedin Longitudinal Study, individuals born in Dunedin, New Zealand in 1972 to 1973, who have undergone assessments from the age of 5 to 38. Using the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the study categorized their cannabis use from “never used” to “persistent dependence,” defined as use on four or more days per week.
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The day before, Canada’s health minister stood at a United Nations podium and announced that her country would introduce new federal legislation to make cannabis legal by next year. Already, people are free to smoke marijuana in four U.S. states and the District of Columbia, and medical marijuana is allowed in almost half the country. Uruguay has fully legalized weed for sale. And a large chunk of South and Central America, including Brazil, Peru, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Costa Rica, have made marijuana more available in varying ways, whether it is for medicinal or recreational use.
In the shift toward legalization of marijuana, the Americas have emerged as a leader. This is a remarkable shift for a region that includes some of the world’s leading producers of marijuana, coca and opium poppy, and where the U.S. government has spearheaded a decades-long campaign against cultivation of the substances. “It’s undeniable that the terms of the debate about drugs are changing in Mexico and in the world,” Peña Nieto said during a speech Thursday announcing his new legislative proposal. “Fortunately, a new world consensus is gradually emerging in favor of reform.”
For many Mexicans, the prospect of such reform seemed unimaginable just a few years back. Using illegal drugs has long been taboo in this conservative, predominantly Catholic country — as is true in many other Latin American nations. Drug-trafficking groups have inflicted horrific violence on the country, with an estimated 100,000 people dying in the past decade as the cartels have battled for control of shipping lanes to the United States. Polls have shown a majority of Mexicans oppose legalizing drugs, fearing that would increase addictions and crime. To have a Mexican president come out publicly in favor of loosening drug laws struck many people as historic. “This was the breaking point,” said Jorge Diaz Cuervo, a Mexican economist and politician who recently published a book on the prospect of legalizing marijuana. “There is now a before and after.”
Peña Nieto’s initiative would make it legal for anyone to own up to 28 grams of marijuana — or one ounce — as long as it was intended for personal use. It would also permit the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes, and make it easier to free prisoners who are being held on minor drug charges. The move came after five public forums held across Mexico this year to solicit public opinion and expert testimony on the prospect of changing drug laws. Mexicans were previously allowed to possess up to 5 grams.
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Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto on Thursday proposed legalizing marijuana-based medicines, raising the amount users can carry and freeing inmates on minor weed charges, in a major shift amid regional efforts to reboot drug policy. Pena Nieto, who is grappling with deadly drug cartel violence, said he will send to Congress a proposal to permit the use and importation of marijuana-based medicines, and raise the amount that weed users can legally carry to 28 grams from 5 grams. Growing and selling marijuana is illegal in Mexico and a mainstay business of violent drug gangs. Pena Nieto did not say where consumers would be able to obtain the weed they are then allowed to carry.
Pena Nieto said if his plan was approved, it would allow many people behind bars for marijuana offenses to be released. However, he gave no further details on what appeared tantamount to a retroactive pardon for such inmates. A traditional opponent of efforts to liberalize drug laws, Pena Nieto began to modify his stance in recent months, reflecting growing regional disenchantment with the so-called War On Drugs. "Our country has suffered the harmful effects of drug-linked organized crime. Thankfully, a new global consensus is gradually gathering steam in favor of a reform to the international drug regime," Pena Nieto said in Mexico City. "Instead of criminalizing consumers, it will offer alternatives and opportunities."
Pena Nieto's proposals are the fruit of a national drug policy review that he called for following a landmark Supreme Court decision in November, which allowed four plaintiffs to grow and consume their own marijuana, paving the way for a liberalization of weed regulations. After the ruling, Cristina Diaz, of Pena Nieto's ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, presented a bill to allow the import of medical marijuana products. In January, she told Reuters she expected the bill to be approved by May. It is unclear what will now happen to her bill. A growing number of politicians in Latin America, where hundreds of thousands of people have died in drug-related violence in recent decades, have begun to express their unease with prohibitionist drug policies.
In the United States, two dozen states have approved marijuana for medical purposes, while recreational use of the drug has been legalized in Colorado, Washington state, Oregon, Alaska and the District of Columbia. The president's announcement will be good news for many of the world's top companies cashing in on legal cannabis, who have been weighing a bet on entering Mexico. Pot private equity firm Privateer Holdings calculates a legal medical and recreational cannabis market in Mexico could be worth $1.7 billion a year.
Mexico's President Proposes To Relax Marijuana Laws
A public works employee in Hugo, a town of about 800 people 90 miles southeast of Denver, detected the chemical and health officials believe it is “marijuana THC-related,” the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office said in a Facebook posting. “At this time, investigators are assessing the situation with state and federal authorities,” the sheriff’s office said. “Bathroom usage is still safe, but until more information is known to us, out of an abundance of caution, avoid drinking Town of Hugo water.” Susan Kelly, the county’s public health director, said there were no reports of anyone falling ill or otherwise being affected by the tainted water. Colorado allows both medical and recreational marijuana use. But it was unclear how THC got into the water, as there are no legal marijuana cultivation sites or dispensaries in the area, according to the Colorado Department of Revenue, which regulates the state’s cannabis industry.
thriving marijuana plant is seen at a grow operation in Denver
Captain Michael Yowell of the sheriff’s office said there was evidence that the well was tampered with, and that the FBI and Colorado Bureau of Investigation have joined the probe. The initial screening was done with a “field testing kit,” Yowell told reporters, and the state health department would conduct more through testing. The level of contamination detected was not specified. The Lincoln County health department said in an alert that residents should avoid drinking, cooking or bathing with the town’s water for at least 48 hours. “The contaminated well has been identified and shut down and the lines are being flushed,” the alert said. “Fresh water will be coming into town for the public as soon as possible.”
Peter Perrone, a chemist and owner of the state-licensed cannabis testing facility, Gobi Analytical in suburban Denver, said he was skeptical of the reports. “It’s virtually impossible to find THC in water in concentrated levels because cannabinoids are not water soluble,” Perrone told Reuters in a telephone interview. Yowell said he understands that some are questioning how THC could be found in the water, but that does not explain why the tests came up positive for the chemical. “I wouldn’t be doing my job for the community if we just wrote this off,” he said.
High water mark: active marijuana ingredient found in U.S. town well
Marijuana-related emergency room visits for children under 10 have increased dramatically in Colorado since the state’s recreational marijuana amendment went into effect in 2014, according to a new study in JAMA Pediatrics. It’s not exactly “reefer madness” but the authors believe that the sudden spike in the number of kids accidentally ingesting their parent’s edibles can be attributed to legalization. To track these cases, researchers from the University of Colorado and the Denver Health and Hospital Authority retroactively examined 163 incidents of marijuana exposure between 2009 and 2015 at Children’s Hospital Colorado in Aurora and a regional poison center.
The average age of the children involved in these incidents was 2.4 years old. When a source of marijuana could be identified, cannabis-infused edibles like candy, cookies, and brownies were found to be responsible 48 percent of the time. “Here at Children’s Hospital Colorado we saw an increase from one child we saw in the emergency department in 2009 to 16 in 2015,” said Dr. G. Sam Wang, the lead author of the study, in a press release. “And at the regional poison center, we had nine calls for kids between [ages] zero and nine in 2009 increase fivefold to 47 in 2015.” Dr. Wang said that the majority of the cases happened at home, with the children later presenting symptoms of “lethargy” and “sleepiness.” Some cases were more serious, he added, requiring tracheal intubation to treat coma or respiratory depression.
Overall, the authors found that the average rate of marijuana-related visits to the children’s hospital had shot up from 1.2 per 100,000 children two years prior legalization to 2.3 per 100,000 two years afterward—a trend that suggests that “[recreational] legalization did affect the incidence of exposures.” Two more findings shore up this hypothesis: Not only did Colorado’s increase in marijuana-related calls for young children outpace such increases in the rest of the country, but nearly half of the cases after legalization involved recreational rather than medical marijuana. Many accidental exposures to marijuana can be avoided with better parental supervision and more secure packaging for edibles. Nearly 10 percent of the exposure cases in the JAMA Pediatrics study involved containers that were not child-resistant. In 34 percent of these cases, the problem was “poor child supervision or product storage.”
In February of this year, for example, a Wisconsin man had to take his 3-year-old son to the hospital after the boy accidentally ate marijuana-infused candy that had been left within reach of children during a birthday party. As WISN reported, the Sheboygan police report said the boy was “breathing but otherwise minimally responsive” when he was taken to the ER. The boy survived after being treated in a children’s hospital; the father was later charged with child neglect. Wang suggests that, as more states legalize weed, they should “think about proper regulations and rules to help prevent some of these exposures and ingestions.” He also believes that researchers should continue to examine “the impacts or lack thereof” of Colorado’s current regulations around the packaging of recreational marijuana. Colorado currently requires edibles to be individually packaged within child-resistant containers designed to be difficult to open for children under the age of 5 (PDF). But once removed from that packaging at home, a brownie by any other name is apparently just as tempting for little fingers.
Reefer Madness Hits Colorado’s Toddlers
All that money would otherwise be going to the black market. Imagine if all states legalized. That would be a lot of money going to businesses that employ people and pay taxes rather than black market drug lords.
Legal marijuana sales forecast to hit $23B in 4 years
Marijuana is rapidly becoming a big, semi-legal business across the country, with $5.7 billion in sales last year and tens of thousands of people working and paying taxes as they cultivate, package and sell cannabis. Colorado, Alaska, Oregon, Washington state and Washington, D.C. have all legalized adult recreational use, and 23 states and the District of Columbia permit some form of medical use. That’s despite the fact that marijuana remains an illegal drug and Schedule 1 controlled substance at the federal level.
And it's still cheaper than buying it from the black market...All that money would otherwise be going to the black market. Imagine if all states legalized. That would be a lot of money going to businesses that employ people and pay taxes rather than black market drug lords.
Legal marijuana sales forecast to hit $23B in 4 years
Marijuana is rapidly becoming a big, semi-legal business across the country, with $5.7 billion in sales last year and tens of thousands of people working and paying taxes as they cultivate, package and sell cannabis. Colorado, Alaska, Oregon, Washington state and Washington, D.C. have all legalized adult recreational use, and 23 states and the District of Columbia permit some form of medical use. That’s despite the fact that marijuana remains an illegal drug and Schedule 1 controlled substance at the federal level.
Democrats will keep increasing taxes and regulations on it until most if it is sold on the black market by criminal gangs anyways.
If you think they are finished with taxing and regulating it you are simply ignorant of the history of the Democratic party.And it's still cheaper than buying it from the black market...All that money would otherwise be going to the black market. Imagine if all states legalized. That would be a lot of money going to businesses that employ people and pay taxes rather than black market drug lords.
Legal marijuana sales forecast to hit $23B in 4 years
Marijuana is rapidly becoming a big, semi-legal business across the country, with $5.7 billion in sales last year and tens of thousands of people working and paying taxes as they cultivate, package and sell cannabis. Colorado, Alaska, Oregon, Washington state and Washington, D.C. have all legalized adult recreational use, and 23 states and the District of Columbia permit some form of medical use. That’s despite the fact that marijuana remains an illegal drug and Schedule 1 controlled substance at the federal level.
Democrats will keep increasing taxes and regulations on it until most if it is sold on the black market by criminal gangs anyways.
