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By Paul Armentano, norml.org
A naturally occurring analogue of THC — tetrahydrocannabivarin (THCV) — has positive metabolic effects in animal models of obesity, according to preclinical study data published online in June in the scientific journal Nutrition & Diabetes.
British researchers assessed the effects of THCV administration on dietary-induced and genetically modified obese mice. Authors reported that although its administration did not significantly affect food intake or body weight gain in any of the models, it did produce several metabolically beneficial effects, including reduced glucose intolerance, improved glucose tolerance, improved liver triglyceride levels, and increased insulin sensitivity.
Researchers concluded: “Based on these data, it can be suggested that THCV may be useful for the treatment of the metabolic syndrome and/or type 2 diabetes (adult onset diabetes), either alone or in combination with existing treatments. Given the reported benefits of another non-THC cannabinoid, CBD in type 1 diabetes, a CBD/THCV combination may be beneficial for different types of diabetes mellitus.”
Harvard Medical School researchers published observational data in the May, 2013 American Journal of Medicine reporting that subjects who regularly consume cannabis possess favorable indices related to diabetic control as compared to occasional or non-users. Writing in an accompanying commentary, the editor-in-chief stated that, “These are indeed remarkable observations that are supported, as the authors note, by basic science experiments that came to similar conclusions. … [T]he NIH and DEA [should] collaborate in developing policies to implement solid scientific investigations that would lead to information assisting physicians in the proper use and prescription of THC in its synthetic or herbal form.”
Observational trial data published in 2012 in the British Medical Journal previously reported that adults with a history of marijuana use had a lower prevalence of type 2 diabetes and possess a lower risk of contracting the disease than did those with no history of cannabis consumption, even after researchers adjusted for social variables such as subjects’ ethnicity and levels of physical activity.
Previously published preclinical data also indicates that the administration of cannabidiol (CBD) halts the development of type 1 (juvenile) diabetes in genetically predisposed mice. — West Coast Leaf News Service
By Paul Armentano, norml.org
Once again a new study has affirmed that the enactment of statewide medical marijuana laws is not associated with increased rates of adolescent use.
According to a report published online in June, 2013 by the American Journal of Public Health, the passage of medical use laws has had no “statistically significant … effect on the prevalence of either lifetime or 30-day marijuana use” by adolescents in those states.
Researchers at the University of Florida College of Medicine studied data from the years 2003 and 2011 and “found no evidence of intermediate-term effects of passage of state MMLs (medical marijuana laws) on the prevalence or frequency of adolescent nonmedical marijuana use in the states evaluated.” Authors concluded, “Our results suggest that, in the states assessed here, MMLs have not measurably affected adolescent marijuana use.”
The study’s findings rebut the myth that passage of medical cannabis adversely impacts teen usage. In fact, published studies have repeatedly debunked this claim.
A 2012 analysis of statewide cannabis laws and adolescent use patterns of commissioned by the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Germany concluded: “[L]egalization of medical marijuana was not accompanied by increases in the use of marijuana or other substances such as alcohol and cocaine among high school students. Interestingly, several of our estimates suggest that marijuana use actually declined with the passage of medical marijuana laws.”
A separate 2012 study by researchers at McGill University in Montreal and published in the journal Annals of Epidemiology reported that passing medical marijuana laws “decreased past-month use among adolescents … and had no discernible effect on the perceived riskiness of monthly use. … [These] estimates suggest that reported adolescent marijuana use may actually decrease following the passing of medical marijuana laws.”
Investigations by research teams at Brown University in 2011 and Texas A&M in 2007 made similar determinations, concluding that, “liberalization of cannabis laws [and] medical cannabis laws do not appear to increase use of the drug.” — West Coast Leaf News Service
By Paul Armentano, norml.org
Cannabis smoke poses only nominal pulmonary risks compared to those associated with tobacco smoke, reports a literature review to be published in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society. Its author, Donald P. Tashkin, MD, emeritus professor of medicine and medical director of the Pulmonary Function Laboratory at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA conducted US-government sponsored studies of marijuana and lung function for over 30 years.
“Dr. Tashkin found that regular smoking of marijuana by itself causes visible and microscopic injury to the large airways that is consistently associated with an increased likelihood of symptoms of chronic bronchitis that subside after cessation of use,” explains the American Thoracic Society news website. “He also found that the evidence does not indicate that habitual use of marijuana leads to significant abnormalities in lung function when assessed either cross-sectionally or longitudinally, except for possible increases in lung volumes and modest increases in airway resistance of unclear clinical significance.”
“[F]indings from a limited number of well-designed epidemiological studies do not suggest an increased risk for the development of either lung or upper airway cancer from light or moderate use, although evidence is mixed concerning possible carcinogenic risks of heavy, long-term use,” notes Dr. Tashkin. “In summary, the accumulated weight of evidence implies far lower risks for pulmonary complications of even regular heavy use of marijuana compared to the grave pulmonary consequences of tobacco.”
In addition, the review found no clear link between marijuana use and the development of COPD or lower respiratory tract infections. The full paper will be released in June, 2013.
Presenters at the annual meeting of the American Academy for Cancer Research in May, 2013, reported that subjects who regularly inhale cannabis smoke have no greater risk of lung cancer than do those who do so occasionally or not at all, based on six case-control studies involving over 5,000 subjects (2,159 cases and 2,985 controls) from around the world that were conducted between 1999 and 2012.
Clinical data published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) last year reported that subjects’ exposure to moderate levels of cannabis smoke, even over the long-term, is not associated with significant adverse effects on pulmonary function.
Vaporizers, which heat marijuana to a point where cannabinoid vapors form, but below the point of combustion, reduce subjects’ intake of potentially hazardous combustible compounds. In several clinical trials, investigators have concluded that vaporization is a “safe and effective” cannabinoid delivery mode that “does not result in exposure to combustion gases.” Researchers also report that vaporization results in higher plasma concentrations of THC compared to smoked cannabis. — West Coast Leaf News Service
By Chris Conrad, westcoastleaf.com
Public opinion polls show a surge of support for cannabis reform in the first half of 2013. Even many Republicans and young Christians favor more progressive policies than the Obama administration has delivered, but federal officials lag far behind.
Industrial hemp — while not well known — is nonetheless widely supported. Fifty-six percent of Americans support legalizing industrial hemp farming and production of low-THC strains, according to national polling data released in May by YouGov.com and The Huffington Post.
The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press released a poll in early April that found 52% of Americans favored marijuana legalization, compared to 45% for keeping it illegal. This was the first time in the history of the Pew poll that legalization has been favored by a majority.
A lot depends on how the question is framed. More than nine out of 10 US adults agree that people who possess or use small quantities of cannabis should not face jail time, according to a May 2013 nationwide poll of 1,003 adults by Princeton Survey Research Associates Int. for Reason Magazine. A 52% majority said that they would support passage of federal legislation to “prevent the federal government from prosecuting people who grow, possess, or sell marijuana in the states that have legalized” such activities, while 42% said they oppose it.
The moralistic argument has apparently lost its luster for many. Most Americans don’t view marijuana use as a sin, and half of young Christians favor legalizing marijuana consumption for adults, according to polling data released in April by the Public Religion Research Institute. Among self-identified Christians age 18 to 29, 45% said they had used cannabis, 32% “strongly favored” legalization and another 18% simply “favored” it, for a total of 50%. Sixty-six percent of respondents who were not religiously affiliated supported it. By contrast, only 9% of Christian age 65 and older endorsed legalizing marijuana.
According to a nationwide Fox News telephone poll of 1,010 registered voters conducted in February and released in May, 85% of voters, including 80% of self-identified Republicans, agree that adults ought to be allowed to use cannabis for therapeutic purposes if a physician authorizes it — the highest level of public support for the issue ever reported in a scientific poll.
“Despite the overwhelming public support for medical marijuana law reform, legislation in Congress to amend federal law to allow for its use in the 18 states which permit it, House Bill 689, the States’ Medical Marijuana Patient Protection Act, has only 16 co-sponsors out of a total of 435 House members and is not even scheduled for a public hearing,” noted NORML director Allen St. Pierre.
And, while Congress lags behind, the drug testing and forced rehabilitation industries have launched a counterattack against legalization through a campaign dubbed “Smart Approach to Marijuana,” with reformed alcoholic and drug addict and former US Rep. Patrick Kennedy as its celebrity spokesperson. Their proposal is to keep prison-based prohibition going but to add a layer of mandatory drug testing and enforced treatment, even for people with no demonstrable drug addiction problem. — WestCoastLeaf.com News Service
By Jeremy Daw, westcoastleaf.com
Licensed and permitted cannabis dispensaries are legal in California — but local governments can also ban dispensaries — after the state Supreme Court handed down a double-edged ruling May 6, 2013. The City of Riverside v. Inland Empire Patients Health and Wellness Center, Inc. ruling, S198638, held that state law “implicitly permits local regulation of medical marijuana facilities.”
Whereas hundreds of local dispensaries are in compliance with the state’s Medical Marijuana Program (commonly known as SB420), the ruling now gives a green light to the more than 80 municipal governments seeking to use land-use ordinances to block cannabis storefronts from operating.
The case revolved around the decision by the Southern California city of Riverside to ban dispensaries as a prohibited land use and demand that the IEPHWC close its doors. The center fought the injunction in court, where both the trial and appellate judges ruled against it.
Rejecting the dispensary’s argument that the state’s voter-approved Prop 215 or the legislature’s SB420 preempted counties and cities from banning dispensaries, the unanimous opinion written by Justice Marvin Baxter stated in part, “Nothing in [Prop. 215] or [SB420] expressedly or impliedly limits the inherent authority of a local jurisdiction, by its own ordinances, to regulate the use of its land, including the authority to provide that facilities for the distribution of medical marijuana will not be permitted to operate within its borders.”
In the wake of their appellate victory, Riverside City Council voted to prohibit dispensaries from making deliveries within city limits. The new law, which went into effect immediately, has already been met with resistance by some local dispensaries, which have apparently continued their deliveries in defiance of the ban.
Medical marijuana advocates are going back to the legislature to try to address the issue. “With our neighbors in Nevada requiring that each county must have at least one dispensary, it is a ‘Jim Crow’ policy for California localities to be allowed to discriminate against patients,” said Chris Conrad, director of Safe Access Now. — WestCoastLeaf.com News Service
By Paul Armentano, www.norml.org
Michigan’s state-authorized cannabis patients have legal protection from criminal prosecution for having THC in their systems while driving, the state Supreme Court ruled on May 21, 2013. In its unanimous opinion, People v Koon, the Court held that patients who comply with the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act (MMMA) may not be criminally convicted of being ‘under the influence’ (DUI) absent evidence of behavioral impairment.
Michigan’s zero tolerance traffic laws classify the operation of a vehicle with any amount of THC in one’s system to be a criminal offense — whether or not one is impaired. Under these types of traffic safety laws, motorists are guilty per se (in fact) of a criminal traffic safety violation if they engage in the act of driving while detectable levels of certain controlled substances, or, in some cases, if their inert metabolites (byproducts) are present in the defendants’ blood or urine. Proof of actual impairment is not a requirement for a conviction under such laws.
To the extent that it “is inconsistent with the MMMA, [the per se DUI law] does not apply to the medical use of marijuana,” the court ruled. On the other hand, if a patient is demonstrably impaired, “the prosecution may seek to convict defendant under any statute of which he was in violation, including” the DUI law. The state’s zero tolerance DUI law remains applicable to non-patients.
Ten states — Arizona, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Rhode Island, Utah, and Wisconsin — impose zero tolerance per se thresholds for the presence of cannabinoids and/or their metabolites. (State-authorized medical cannabis patients in Arizona and Rhode Island are exempt by statute from prosecution under these per se statutes unless the state can provide additional evidence of psychomotor impairment.) In May, Oklahoma lawmakers also approved zero tolerance per se legislation, House Bill 1441, criminalizing the presence of THC and its metabolites in a driver’s blood or urine. That law goes into effect on October 1, 2013.
Five additional states impose non-zero-tolerant per se thresholds for cannabinoids in blood: Montana (5ng/ml — law takes effect on October 1, 2013), Pennsylvania (1ng/ml), Ohio (2ng/ml), Nevada (2ng/ml) and Washington (5ng/ml).
Last month, Colorado lawmakers also approved legislation, effective as of July 1, 2013, stating that the presence of THC/blood levels above 5ng/ml “gives rise to permissible inference that the defendant was under the influence.”
However, according to the United States National Highway Transportation and Safety Administration (NHTSA): “It is difficult to establish a relationship between a person’s THC blood or plasma concentration and performance impairing effects. … It is inadvisable to try and predict effects based on blood THC concentrations alone.” In addition, a 2013 academic review of per se drugged driving laws and their impact on road safety found “no evidence that per se drugged driving laws reduce traffic fatalities.” — WestCoastLeaf.com News Service
By Phil Smith, stopthedrugwar.org
Nevada’s Republican governor, Brian Sandoval, signed a new state law on June 12, 2013 allowing for medical marijuana dispensaries. Senate Bill 374 establishes a state-regulated system of dispensaries and envisions up to 66 dispensaries across the state, with up to 40 in Las Vegas, 10 in Reno and at least one in each county.
“We applaud Gov. Sandoval and the legislature for their leadership and commend those law enforcement organizations that expressed support for this much-needed legislation,” said Karen O’Keefe, director of state policies for the Marijuana Policy Project, who testified in support of the bill.
“It will make Nevada a safer and healthier place not only for medical marijuana patients, but for the entire community. This new law will provide patients with the safe and reliable access to medical marijuana that they deserve,” O’Keefe said. “Regulating medical marijuana sales will also generate revenue and take a bite out of the state’s underground marijuana market.”
Sandoval had earlier expressed concern about the startup costs of the program that in the long run may provide the state millions of dollars in tax revenue. Introduced by Sens. Tick Segerblom (D-Las Vegas) and Mark Hutchison (R-Las Vegas), the bill creates rules and regulations for not only dispensaries, but also infused-product manufacturers and cultivation and testing facilities. It also imposes 2% excise taxes on both wholesale and retail sales, with 75% of those revenues going to the education fund and 25% going to cover the cost of regulating the medical marijuana industry.
The state’s voter-approved medical marijuana law, passed twice in 1998 and 2000, required the legislature to create a medical marijuana program that included appropriate methods to supply medical marijuana to patients. Now, the legislature has finally done so, and Nevada will join states that have state-regulated dispensaries. Two more jurisdictions, Washington, DC, and Vermont, should come on board this summer, and the rule-making process for dispensaries is underway in Connecticut and Massachusetts. — WestCoastLeaf.com News Service
 Colorado legislates legal cannabis rules,
Washington hands task to Alcohol Board
By Jeremy Daw, JD, weedthepeoplebook.com
Since two states legalized adult cannabis sales and use last November, they have taken different approaches to the voter mandates. Colorado’s Amendment 64 Implementation Task Force, an appointed body of experts and bureaucrats, has released its final recommendations for how to treat cannabis businesses in the state’s new legal regime. By contrast, Washington State has outsourced much of its implementation of Initiative 502 to an outside group.
Colorado’s A-64, approved by a 55-45 margin by voters, placed a constitutional imperative on state bureaucrats to regulate so-called “recreational” cannabis in a manner similar to alcohol, but many of the specific regulations like tax rates and cultivation restrictions were left unaddressed by the voter-approved ballot initiative. The Task Force’s recommendations, which are preliminary and non-binding, are thus the first proposed rules for many specific situations.
Some proposed rules have already provoked controversy, such as the proposed prohibition of all outdoor cultivation sites under A-64 (the state’s medical marijuana program would not be affected by this rule, and it is unclear whether greenhouses would also be proscribed under it). Taxes, too, have become a point of contention. While A-64 approved taxes of up to 15% on adult sales of cannabis, the Task Force has recommended that state lawmakers return to voters for approval of new taxes, including an excise tax of 15% or higher on wholesale transactions and an additional retail tax on top of the state’s general sales tax. While the Task Force did not recommend any specific rate for the retail sales tax, it cited 25% as an exemplary figure.
Yet the Task Force’s endorsement of “cannabis tourism” – allowing out-of-state residents to consume cannabis within Colorado but not to traffic it out – may prove the group’s most controversial recommendation. While the proposal, especially in conjunction with high sales taxes, holds the promise of badly-needed revenues for the state, it also raises the specter of increased interstate trafficking to neighboring states where cannabis remains illegal.
By contrast, the state of Washington has turned to an outside consulting group for help in crafting its implementation of I-502. The consulting firm, Botec, is headed by UCLA public policy professor Mark Kleiman and includes Nobel-winning economist Thomas Schelling and CPA Luigi Zamarra, the architect of Harborside Health Center’s tax compliance strategy. While the group has yet to announce any specific recommendations, Kleiman wrote in his 2012 book Marijuana Legalization: What Everyone Needs to Know that he favors solutions such as small cooperatives or heavily regulated commerce over “commercialization on the alcohol model [which] would create an industry like the alcohol industry: a multibillion-dollar enterprise devoted to creating and sustaining as much addiction as possible.” However, other members of his team bring different approaches to the table and the Liquor Board structure will also affect the final design of the program. The missing element is what the federal government will do in response.
By Martin Williams
The nation’s largest medical marijuana patient advocacy group, Americans for Safe Access (ASA), filed a petition with the federal court of appeals March 22 in its epic battle to force the federal government to comply with its own laws on medical marijuana.
The UN drug control treaties authorizes nations to allow the medical use of cannabis and the federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is required to move the plant out of its banned status, Schedule 1, if it has accepted medical use. Currently 18 states and thousands of studies agree that it has medical value and is wrongly prohibited.
In its widely watched case that seeks to reclassify marijuana for medical use, ASA v. DEA, the patient group seeks a rehearing before the original panel, as well as seeking full (en banc) review by the US Court of Appeals for the Washington DC Circuit. The circuit court had granted plaintiffs standing — recognized its right to sue the federal government to reclassify marijuana — but denied the appeal on its merits on Jan. 22, 2013 by setting a new, virtually impossible to meet standard for assessing medical efficacy.
Essentially, it held that if the DEA says cannabis has no accepted medical value and insists that the plant must pass all the federal requirements used for a single molecule medicine and do so without anyone being allowed to do those studies, it must be right because DEA alone — not scientists — gets to pick and choose what studies to accept. Its position has been likened to the medieval church declaring that the world was flat simply because church bureaucrats proclaimed it to be so, despite all evidence to the contrary.
“To deny that sufficient evidence is lacking on the medical efficacy of marijuana is to ignore a mountain of well-documented studies that conclude otherwise,” said ASA Chief Counsel Joe Elford, who argued the appeal before the D.C. court last October. “The Court has unreasonably raised the bar for what qualifies as an ‘adequate and well-controlled’ study.” ASA cited more than 200 peer-reviewed studies in its appeal, but the court held that plaintiffs must produce evidence from Phase II and Phase III clinical trials as used by companies trying to bring a new drug to market. The DEA has blocked such studies from being undertaken with cannabis.
The Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis, made up of individuals and organizations including ASA, filed a petition to reclassify marijuana in 2002 that was denied by DEA in July 2011, after ASA sued the Obama Administration for unreasonably delaying the answer. The appeal to the DC Circuit was the first time in nearly 20 years that a federal court has reviewed the issue of whether adequate scientific evidence exists to reclassify marijuana. At that time the court had rejected the patients’ standing to seek reclassification.
National polls since have consistently shown support for medical marijuana among Americans at around 80 percent.
Advocates point out that the research approval process for marijuana, controlled by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), is unique and only allows research into harmful effects, not medical efficacy. After Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) and several other members of Congress introduced HR689 in February, the “States’ Medical Marijuana Patient Protection Act,” hundreds of supporters met in Washington DC to lobby for its passage. It would reschedule marijuana allow states to establish production and distribution laws without interference by the federal government, and remove current obstacles to research.
More information at americansforsafeaccess.org.
By Paul Armentano, NORML Deputy Director
California medical marijuana patient Daisy Brant has had her infant child literally torn from her breast twice to be handed over to Child Protective Services and been charged with child abuse because police found medical marijuana growing in her home. She won the first case, got her child back, was raided again and is now fighting the second case as a new published study shows how wrong and cruel the police have been in this and other cases in what amounts to little more than what Brant has called “government-sanctioned child-stealing.”
“The role of child protection in grow-operations,” a study in the March 2013 International Journal of Drug Policy, shows that children who live in homes where marijuana is being cultivated do not suffer from adverse health effects at any greater rate than do comparable children in cannabis-free environments.
A pair of investigators with the University of British Columbia, School of Social Work compared the household, family and individual characteristics of 181 children found living in homes with cannabis grow operations in two regions in British Columbia, Canada. Data collected on site included physical characteristics of the homes, health characteristics of the children living there, and the adolescents’ prescription drug history. They also compared the rates of the subjects’ prescription drug use with that of a group of children from the same geographic areas.
Researchers reported “no significant difference between the health of the children living in cannabis grow operations and the comparison group of children, based on their prescription history and their reported health at the time.” The study concluded, “The findings of this study challenge contemporary child welfare approaches and have implications for both child protection social workers and the policymakers who develop frameworks for practice. … Although there is little argument that the physical hazards found in cannabis grow-operations pose a risk to children and adults living in the homes, the associated health risks are not as clear. Policymakers involved in establishing frameworks and protocols for responding to these unique child welfare cases must consider the absence of clinical evidence to indicate these children are unwell and whether there are grounds for child welfare intervention.”
For more information, see norml.org.
By Phillip Smith, stopthedrugwar.org
A marijuana policy trifecta hit Capitol Hill in February 2013 regarding recreational marijuana, medical marijuana, and hemp.
Early in the month, reformist House members filed bills to end federal cannabis prohibition and tax the trade, and in mid month a bill to legalize hemp. By the end of the month, legislators had filed bills to protect medical marijuana patients and providers, and US senators filed a companion bill to legalize industrial hemp.
Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), who earlier sponsored a marijuana tax bill, rolled out House Resolution 689, the “States’ Medical Marijuana Protection Act;” Rep. Sam Farr (D-CA) introduced House Resolution 710, the “Truth in Trials Act;” and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and three co-sponsors filed the “Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2013,” a companion bill to House Resolution 525.
Blumenauer’s bill, introduced with bipartisan co-sponsorship, would grant federal recognition to medical use and remove marijuana from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act. Regulating medical marijuana would be left to the states, and people complying with state medical marijuana laws would be exempt from federal arrest and prosecution.
“There is a plethora of scientific evidence establishing marijuana’s medical safety and efficacy and public polling for marijuana law reform is skyrocketing,” said Jasmine Tyler, deputy director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance. “However, when it comes to marijuana and the federal government, old fashioned politics routinely trumps modern science. The States’ Medical Marijuana Patient Protection Act offers us hope we will see significant change with its passage.”
Farr’s “Truth in Trials Act” attempts to restore fairness in federal medical marijuana prosecutions. Because the federal government refuses to recognize marijuana as anything other than a proscribed controlled substance, medical marijuana defendants and their attorneys are barred from even mentioning it or their state laws allowing its use in federal court. That has repeatedly resulted in state law-abiding medical marijuana growers and providers being convicted as drug dealers in federal courts, and sentenced accordingly.
“Congress has the opportunity to establish a sensible public health policy on medical marijuana, and do what the Obama Administration has been afraid or unwilling to do,” said Steph Sherer, executive director of Americans for Safe Access (ASA. “Patient advocates intend to push Congress to take heed of the abundant scientific evidence showing marijuana’s medical value, and act in accordance with the overwhelming popular support this issue receives.”
With Sen. Wyden’s introduction of a Senate bill, there are now hemp bills in both houses. In addition to Wyden and Democratic and fellow Oregonian Sen. Jeff Merkley (D), the Senate hemp bill has the support of Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Senate party leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), both of whom have support from the ultra-right wing “Tea Party” faction, also endorsed hemp legislation back home in Kentucky.
“I am proud to introduce legislation with my friend Rand Paul and Senate colleagues, that will allow Kentucky farmers to harness the economic potential that industrial hemp can provide,” McConnell said. “During these tough economic times, this legislation has the potential to create jobs and provide a boost to Kentucky’s economy and to our farmers and their families.”
The House version of the hemp bill was introduced earlier by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and has 28 cosponsors. The bills would remove federal restrictions on the domestic cultivation of industrial hemp. Specifically, the bill would remove hemp with less than 0.3 percent tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) from CSA Schedule I, and define it as a non-drug.
“Unfortunately, there are some dumb regulations that are hurting economic growth and job creation, and the ban on growing industrial hemp is certainly among them,” Wyden said. “The opportunities for American farmers and businesses are obvious here. It’s time to boost revenues for farmers and reduce the costs for the businesses around the country that use hemp.”
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, one of the most powerful and top-ranking leaders of the Democratic Party in the US, told a Denver Post columnist that she agrees that federal authorities ought to respect state marijuana laws.
When Electa Draper asked, “What are the measures in Washington (DC) that might address states that legalize marijuana and what is your view of federal policy,” Pelosi expressed her support for state laws and encouraged a tax and regulate marijuana policy in an interview published March 11, 2013.
“I support the leadership of Jared Polis, who has been a leader on this issue as well as other members. I understand some of the Republican members support the law now that is passed, even if they didn’t before. But in any case, to answer your question, what is my position regarding the states that have medical marijuana or recreational marijuana as the law of their states: I think that has to be respected. I think tax and regulate.
“In order to do that, there has to be a level of respect for the fact, that if you are going to have recreational marijuana, someone is in business to do that and they have to have tax treatment in order for them to function as a business. How the state of Colorado interacts with the federal government on the taxation issues is something they have to work out, but I think they should.”
The full interview is posted at denverpost.com.
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