Alaskan capital says yes to on-site marijuana edible consumption, outdoor cannabis smoking areas
A city ordinance passed by the Juneau Assembly will allow customers to consume cannabis edibles inside licensed dispensaries as well as smoke in designated outdoor areas. The ordinance was approved 6-2, and an amendment that would have allowed only vaping in outdoor smoking areas failed.
Local cannabis business owner John Nemeth approved of the Assembly’s decision.
“This is a great step in the right direction,” Nemeth said. “It’s something we never thought we’d see here in Juneau and it’s giving people a safe place to consume.”
Medical marijuana could hit shelves in Louisiana next week
It’s been four years since Louisiana lawmakers legalized medical marijuana, and next week patients could finally have access to therapeutic cannabis.
“If there are no problems, no contamination, and we don’t expect any, then hopefully by the end of the week or early next week, there will be products moving to the market. That’s kind of the timetable,” said Louisiana Agriculture Commissioner Mike Strain.
Only cannabis grown at Louisiana State University and Southern University is authorized for use in the state’s medical-marijuana program, and nine pharmacies will dispense cannabis in liquid form. Patients can use liquid cannabis applied as drops under the tongue, or into an inhaler. Louisiana also plans to allow patients access to cannabis oils, pills, and topical applications.
Oklahoma dispensary owners sue Facebook
Seven medical marijuana dispensaries have filed a suit against Facebook for putting them in “Facebook jail” for posting about their businesses. The owners say that Facebook has “a pattern of targeting the Oklahoma medical marijuana industry” and that the social media giant is censoring their business pages.
“Facebook jail” is when a page or profile is temporarily disabled for allegedly violating standards.
The petition claims that “Facebook has an arbitrary, subjective, discriminatory and archaic policy and their policy does not apply to all. It is just random. Or at least it appears to be random. There is no way for an individual or a business to contact anyone within Facebook to get assistance. They hide behind their keyboards and mete out whatever punishment they feel if they find that you have committed an infraction to their subjective community standards.”
The marijuana business owners are seeking a court order preventing Facebook from censoring their bushiness pages, as well as more than $75,000 for the “economic harm” caused by the censorship.
Since recreational marijuana sales began in Colorado in 2014, the state has collected $1.02 billion in tax revenue, according to the latest numbers released by the Colorado Department of Revenue. Adult-use cannabis sales in the last five years have exceeded $6.56 billion. Legal cannabis has created jobs for 41,076 people who work in the industry, and there are currently 2,917 licensed marijuana businesses in the state.
“Today’s report continues to show that Colorado’s cannabis industry is thriving, but we can’t rest on our laurels. We can and we must do better in the face of increased national competition. We want Colorado to be the best state for investment, innovation and development for this growing economic sector,” said Governor Jared Polis (D) in a press release. “This industry is helping grow our economy by creating jobs and generating valuable revenue that is going towards preventing youth consumption, protecting public health and safety and investing in public school construction.”
Colorado and Washington state were the first states to legalize adult-use marijuana in 2012 (with the first recreational dispensaries opening in 2014), but since then 11 other states have fully legalized cannabis as well. That means increased competition from states with larger populations and fewer regulations. Cannabis sales in Colorado have begun to level out, in part due to a decline in medical marijuana sales. In 2018, recreational marijuana sales were up 11%, but medical cannabis sales were down 20%.
Governor Polis told CNBC being the first state to sell recreational cannabis has been an advantage for Colorado, something that he hopes to leverage in the coming years.
“We are always going to be relatively small potatoes on the actual sales. … We are just not going to be as big as states like California or New Jersey. … We want to make sure that 10 years from now, point-of-sales systems, chemistry, genetics — all those pieces — are housed here in Colorado with successful companies that power a multibillion national industry.”
Researchers at the University of Toronto have completed mapping the cannabis sativa genome and have discovered how CBD and THC evolved in hemp and marijuana.
Hemp and cannabis are both species of the Cannabis sativa family, but while they share 85% of the same proteins, the two strains evolved distinct chemical properties. Hemp produces an abundance of the cannabidiol CBD while cannabis contains more of the psychoactive cannabidiol THC.
By mapping the cannabis genome, researchers discovered that marijuana and hemp evolved into separate species of the same plant through the action of virus-like DNA segments called retroelements. About ten million years ago, one of these virus-like infections spread through the Cannabis sativa species, changing the DNA of the plant and replicating itself into what scientists call “junk DNA.” The mutation changed the chemical compounds the plants created, and selective breeding by humans reinforced these characteristics.
“The researchers believe that gene duplication of the ancestral synthase gene and expanding retroelements drove ancient cannabis to split into chemically distinct types. Humans subsequently selected for plants containing desirable chemistry such as high THC,” according to U of T News.
Other findings in the study included the discovery of the gene responsible for producing a cannabinoid called cannabichromene (CBC), which may also have some psychoactive properties. There are hundreds of cannabinoids, many of which are still unknown. Mapping the cannabis genome means that more cannabinoids can be discovered and studied, leading to “new strains with desired medical properties as well as varieties that can be grown more sustainably, or with increased resistance to diseases and pests.”
Until now, producing cannabis plants that do not produce any THC has been unsuccessful. However the chromosome map “should make it possible to separate them during breeding to grow plants without THC.”
Tim Hughes and researchers at the University of Toronto, Jonathan Page of Aurora Cannabis and the University of British Columbia, and Harm van Bakel of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai collaborated on the research. The study was published in the Journal of Genome Research.
A first draft of the study was originally released in 2011; however, it was still incomplete, something the researchers blame on restrictions in cannabis research.
“Mainstream science has still not done enough because of research restrictions,” says Page. “Legalization and looming ease of research regulation really provide for opportunities for more research to be done. And Canada is leading the way.”
There’s been a lot of buzz around CBD these days, even before rumors that Coca-Cola is considering a CBD-infused beverage. The CBD industry has doubled in size in the last two years, and one cannabis research firm estimates that the cannabis market will reach $20 billion by 2020.
CBD products are everywhere, from topicals, capsules, oils and edibles, to sublingual tinctures. There are a whole host of health benefits to using CBD, including stopping seizures, relieving anxiety and depressions, and reducing inflammation and pain. However, with all the buzz come a lot of claims about what CBD supposedly cures. It’s still early days in cannabis and CBD research, but here’s a break down of some of the known benefits of CBD.
Seizures and Epilepsy
Earlier this year, the FDA approved Epidiolex, a cannabis-derived medication used to treat certain forms of epilepsy. The medication is literally a lifesaver for kids with two rare forms of epilepsy, and the FDA approval could open up further research into CBD.
Anxiety and Depression
There have been several studies that show CBD is effective as an anti-anxiety and antidepressant treatment. A 2011 study even found that CBD can help with social anxiety. Researchers conducted a study where people were either given CBD, a placebo, or nothing at all and compared their anxiety levels after speaking in front of a large audience. Those who were given CBD experienced less anxiety than those people given the placebo.
Psychosis
CBD could be effective in treating illnesses like bipolar disorder by acting as an antipsychotic. Traditional antipsychotic medications come with unwanted side-effects, but CBD “has a pharmacological profile similar to that of atypical antipsychotic drugs” without the downsides.
A study from earlier this year researching schizophrenia found that CBD “may represent a new class of treatment for the disorder.“
Opioid Addiction
A study published in the JAMA Internal Medicine found that there’s a significant reduction in opioid use when cannabis is an option. The study looked at data from Medicare and found that having access to cannabis resulted in reducing the number of opioid prescriptions by 3.7 million daily doses. In states that allow homegrown cannabis, there were an estimated 1.8 million fewer pills dispensed per day.
Neurodegenerative Disorders
The World Health Organization’s 2018 report on CBD found that the cannabis compound could be a therapeutic treatment for multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s Parkinson’s, Huntington’s disease. Another study found that CBD can reverse the iron accumulation in the brain that causes neurodegenerative disease.
The same UK-based company that makes Epidiolex also makes Sativex, a cannabis-based drug that treats spasticity in multiple sclerosis.
While studies into CBD promise to help treat wide-ranging illnesses, there is still more research that needs to be done. Luckily, high demand may pressure lawmakers to loosen restrictions around researching cannabis and CBD.
“When I first started, it was very hard to get funding or attention for researching CBD,” said Yasmin Hurd, director of the Addiction Institute at Mount Sinai Hospital. “We can’t make progress on understanding the benefits of CBD without funding and support. The more demand there is for CBD, the more I think we’ll see large-scale studies.”
The Colorado marijuana industry continues to be a competitive and thriving market nearly five years after adult-use sales began. A new report commissioned by the Colorado Marijuana Enforcement Division conducted by the Marijuana Policy Group and the Leeds School of Business covers a wide range of topics, including trends in supply and demand, consumption, pricing, and market consolidation.
Trends in Consumption
Colorado’s legal marijuana market bought 665,134 pounds of cannabis in 2017, equating to over $1.5 billion in total earnings.
Flower still makes up the majority of cannabis sold in Colorado, but the demand for concentrates and edibles is increasing. In 2017, there were 301.7 metric tons of cannabis sold in the state. Flower made up 61.8% of sales, followed by concentrates at 27.3%. Trim accounted for 5.9%, and infused edibles and non-infused edibles accounting for 4.9% and 0.3%.
Consumption trends varied in tourist areas. Overall, edibles accounted for 13% of the adult-use market, but in tourist locations edibles accounted for nearly 25%.
Falling Prices, Increasing Potency
While cannabis prices have wildly fluctuated and hit record lows in other legal states, cannabis pricing is Colorado has decreased at a more steady pace. Flower prices have “declined slowly,” while the price of a standard serving of THC has “declined more rapidly.”
From the Report:
“The average cost of a 57.1 mg serving of inhaled THC from adult use flower has decreased 50.8 percent, from $3.68 in 2014 to $1.81 in 2017. A serving of THC from medical flower cost an average of $1.11 in 2017, down 40.0 percent from the 2014 average of $1.79. In both cases, the rate of decline in price-per serving outpaced the price-per-gram declines, due to a combination of falling flower prices and slightly increasing potency from 2014 through 2017.”
The numbers for concentrates showed a more dramatic decrease in price.
“The average price of a serving of THC from adult use concentrates fell 61.7 percent, from $4.70 in 2014 to $1.80 in 2017, while a serving from medical concentrates fell 57.0 percent, from $3.28 in 2014 to $1.41 in 2017. Once again, the price per serving of concentrated THC fell significantly faster than the per gram price of concentrates due to the increase in average potency from 2014 to 2017, coupled with a steady decline in concentrate prices.”
Flower potency has remained relatively stable since 2014, but the average potency of marijuana concentrates has increased. In 2014, the average potency of concentrates was 56.6%; in 2017, the average potency is 68.6%, a 21.2% increase.
Market Consolidation and Competitiveness
Cannabis used to only be available on the black market, but as legalization becomes more common across the country, there’s a real worry about the industry being dominated by a few corporate companies. Instead of a large number of small businesses competing in the marketplace, consolidation can lead to a few, big-money companies that grow, manufacture, and distribute marijuana to an entire state or multiple states.
However, the study found that while there’s some consolidation in Colorado, the marketplace is still competitive. The market in Colorado isn’t highly concentrated, which means that there’s still room for small businesses to thrive.
The MED study found that in Colorado, the largest 10 operators accounted for 26.6 percent of total market sales in 2015, 25.4 percent of total market sales in 2016, and 23.1 percent of total market sales in 2017.
The study also found that competition, rather than tourism demand, was a more decisive factor in cannabis pricing. The report showed that marijuana prices were highest in parts of the state with the fewest legal dispensaries. For example, the average price per gram of flower sold for adult use was $4.82; in Summit County, which draws thousands of tourists to its ski resorts every year, the average price per gram of flower was $7.17.
The report shows how far the regulated market has come in Colorado. In 2014, only 65% of consumption came from the regulated market. In 2017, the regulated market was more than able to meet both resident and visitor demand for cannabis.
“This report gives me comfort that the licensed, regulated commercial marketplace is working well and is part of the state’s continuous effort to monitor a comprehensive marijuana regulatory framework, improve transparency and use data to inform the public about Colorado’s marketplace,” said Mike Hartman, executive director of the Colorado Department of Revenue in a press release.
