Cannabis Law Prof Blog

Marijuana and Heavy Metal Go Together Like . . .

Marijuana and heavy metal have gone together since at least the Seventies, when you rolled doobies while Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath LPs spun on the turntable.

They still apparently get along, but now it turns out that heavy metal is often found in the marijuana that's smoked these days.  Along with other stuff that manufacturers don't want necessarily to put on the labels.  From Smithsonian.com:

    In Colorado, which made marijuana legal in November 2012, the latest results show that the pot lining store shelves is much more potent than the weed of 30 years ago. But the boost in power comes at a cost—modern marijuana mostly lacks the components touted as beneficial by medical marijuana advocates, and it is often contaminated with fungi, pesticides and heavy metals.

    “There's a stereotype, a hippy kind of mentality, that leads people to assume that growers are using natural cultivation methods and growing organically," says Andy LaFrate, founder of Charas Scientific, one of eight Colorado labs certified to test cannabis. "That's not necessarily the case at all." LaFrate presented his results this week at a meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in Denver.

    LaFrate says he's been surprised at just how strong most of today's marijuana has become. His group has tested more than 600 strains of marijuana from dozens of producers. Potency tests, the only ones Colorado currently requires, looked at tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive compound that produces the plant's famous high. They found that modern weed contains THC levels of 18 to 30 percent—double to triple the levels that were common in buds from the 1980s. That's because growers have cross-bred plants over the years to create more powerful strains, which today tout colorful names like Bruce Banner, Skunkberry and Blue Cookies.

    Those thinking that stronger pot is always better pot might think again. Breeding for more powerful marijuana has led to the virtual absence of cannabidol (CBD), a compound being investigated for treatments to a range of ills, from anxiety and depression to schizophrenia, Huntington's disease and Alzheimer's. Much of the commercially available marijuana LaFrate's lab tested packs very little of this particular cannabinoid. “A lot of the time it's below the detection level of our equipment, or it's there at a very low concentration that we just categorize as a trace amount,” he says. Consumers specifically seeking medical benefits from cannabis-derived oils or other products may have a tough time determining how much, if any, CBD they contain, because Colorado doesn't currently require testing.

    “I've heard a lot of complaints from medical patients because somebody claims that a product has a high level of CBD, and it turns out that it actually doesn't,” LaFrate says. Colorado also does not yet require testing of marijuana for contaminants. Washington, the second state to legalize recreational marijuana, does require such testing for microbial agents like E. coli, salmonella and yeast mold, and officials there rejected about 13 percent of the marijuana products offered for sale in 2014.

    "It's pretty startling just how dirty a lot of this stuff is," LaFrate says. His team commonly found fungi and bacteria in the marijuana products they tested. But for now it's unclear just how much marijuana growers need to clean up their product. "Like ourselves, this plant is living with bacteria that are essential to its survival. In terms of microbial contamination, it's kind of hard to say what's harmful and what's not," he adds. "So the questions become: What's a safe threshold, and which contaminants do we need to be concerned about?"

    At the top of that list would be chemical contaminants in products such as concentrates, like the hard, amber-colored Shatter, which contains more than 90 percent THC, LaFrate suggests. Concentrates and edibles (think brownies) make up perhaps half of the current Colorado market. Their makers sometimes suggest that their chosen products are healthier than standard weed because they don't involve frequent smoking. But some manufacturers employ potentially harmful compounds like butane to strip the plant of most everything but THC. Tests also show that marijuana plants can draw in heavy metals from the soil in which they are grown, and concentrating THC can increase the amounts of heavy metals, pesticides or other substances that end up in a product. That means regulations for their production still need to be hammered out, LaFrate says.

    “People use all kinds of different methods to produce concentrates,” LaFrate says. “They allow people to use rubbing alcohol and heptane. But what grade of solvents are they using? Are they buying heptane on eBay, and if so, what exactly is in there? There are a whole bunch of issues to figure out, and right now there are not enough resources and really no watchdog.”

Hey, here's a thought:  Maybe the FDA could get involved.

Oh, and Besides Pirates, There's Sharks

It's drizzling in Fort Worth, but some of my students just got back from the sunny Cayman Islands, where Texas A&M Law School's Dean Andy Morriss teaches his popular course "Offshore Financial Transactions" that Dean Andy Morris teaches in the Cayman Islands.  So it's a good time to be humming "Reggae Shark."

 

Same anti-legalization arguments, new state

As Douglas Berman pointed out, Derek Siegle, executive director of the federally funded Ohio High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area  Program, presented a guest column piece today at cleveland.com, in which he included nearly every argument he could imagine in opposition to ending marijuana prohibition. His article presents a wonderful (if stream-of-consciousness) summary of all the main talking points currently used by HIDTA officials around the country. This seems like a great opportunity to dispel some of the dire warnings we often hear. I’m cherry picking here, since there are so many arguments, a full response rather longish. But here are some of the more commonly used, and abused, arguments I see out there.

Not that many people are arrested for marijuana possession, so the impact on the criminal justice system isn't that great.

I never really understood this argument. It seems to be saying "we could be jailing everyone, but we really aren't doing it all that much - so that's good, right?" If it is so rarely invoked, then why allow for jail time at all? It seems to suggest that even the system recognizes that jail is not an appropriate sanction. 

Of course, lots of people (particularly African Americans) are arrested for possession, so this argument might not be as compelling for those lucky contestants who win a free police escort to their local jail. But more to the point, the criminal justice system is far more than incarceration. Jailable offenses mean court appointed attorneys or private counsel, courtroom time, and the time law enforcement spends processing cases. On the back end, it can mean the loss of personal property and money in asset forfeiture proceedings, along with probation. Even technical violations of probation rules can lead to (re)arrest and incarceration, which would not show up in the claim that possession doesn't often lead to jail time. And then there is a criminal drug conviction that could show up in background checks for jobs, school, and housing for a lifetime. 

Heavy consumers may find that the accumulation of THC in their system can affect them in a variety of ways, both physically and mentally.

If this is true, it is a compelling reason to not over-consume, but there is no reason to believe that criminalizing behavior changes people’s practices. Research has shown that teen use does not go up when penalties go down. Nebraska and Mississippi removed the possibility of jail in the 1970s, and teen use is lower in those states than in neighboring Texas, which treats possession as a crime. Studies also generally show that raising penalties for use does not deter behavior, and lowering penalties does not encourage behavior. The bottom line is that while marijuana over-consumption could possibly be a health concern, making it a crime does not deter consumption nor deal with the actual concern mentioned here - health.

Marijuana is more potent than it used to be.

There is some evidence that marijuana is more potent that it was several decades ago, but unlike both narcotic medications and alcohol — which take the lives of tens of thousands of Americans every year — there are no known incidents of overdose deaths attributable to marijuana at any time.  Despite its increased potency, it is still a safer alternative than substances we already regulate and control.

Potential tax revenue will only cover about 15 percent of the collateral costs to our community: increased drug treatment, emergency room visits, crime, traffic accidents and school "dropouts."

While it is not clear where HIDTA's statistics come from, the Congressional Research Service did an analysis of the revenue potential of a federally taxed adult marijuana market, published in November 2014, which is directly on point. It found these costs manageable with a modest tax:

Economic theory suggests the efficient level of taxation is equal to marijuana’s external cost to society. Studies conducted in the United Kingdom (UK) and Canada suggest that the costs of individual marijuana consumption to society are between 12% and 28% of the costs of an individual alcohol user, and total social costs are even lower after accounting for the smaller number of marijuana users in society. Based on an economic estimate of $30 billion of net external costs for alcohol, the result is an external cost of $0.5 billion to $1.6 billion annually for marijuana. These calculations imply that an upper limit to the economically efficient tax rate could be $0.30 per marijuana cigarette (containing an average of one half of a gram of marijuana) or $16.80 per ounce. An increased number of users in a legal market would raise total costs, but not necessarily costs per unit.

We do not know what the wholesale or retail sales rate would be under the better-known legalization effort in Ohio, or if they are comparable to prices in other parts of the country for similar products. If they were, a tax rate of 15% would be considerably higher than $16.80 per ounce. 

States that do not tax medical marijuana find that their adult consumers cheat and sign up as medical marijuana patients. And most medical marijuana patients are under 40.

First of all, the “most are under 40 argument” is simply false. According to state marijuana program statistics, the average age of patients in Colorado is 42.  The average in Montana is 47, and the average in Arizona is between 40 and 50.

Secondly, in states that have both medical marijuana and adult use, whether or not people are gaming the system is a question for regulators, not an argument in favor of maintaining the criminality of marijuana use. It is worth noting that according to research by the Toronto-based Center for Addictions and Mental Health and the Canadian Centre for Substance Abuse, there are somewhere between 400,000 and 1 million self-reported medical cannabis users in Canada, or approximately 4% of the adult population, while only around 1/10 that number are registered patients. It is hard to speculate how many adult consumers would qualify as patients. But at the end of the day, it took a medical professional - not a law enforcement officer - to recommend medical use of marijuana in the first place.   

Legalization will lead to greater use by our youth.

This statement is directly contradicted by peer-reviewed studies, which show that teen use either remained constant, or more often than not, dropped in medical marijuana states. (One interesting question is whether or not teen use of alcohol went up or down after alcohol Prohibition ended. Incidents of reported alcoholism actually did drop based on medical records from the time, but I have never seen this issue researched with respect to teen use.)

Marijuana is a gateway drug.

No anti-marijuana opinion piece is complete without the gateway drug myth, which has been repeatedly debunked by those who have actually studied it, most notably in a White House-commissioned study by the Institute of Medicine in 1999. That study found that marijuana "does not appear to be a gateway drug to the extent that it is the cause or even that it is the most significant predictor of serious drug abuse.” The gateway myth confuses causation and correlation. As recently explained by Susan Weiss, a psychologist with the National Institute on Drug Abuse, “[p]eople tend to use marijuana before they use other illicit drugs, but that’s probably because it’s much more available, and it’s the drug that people are more likely to come in contact with.” Just like alcohol does not cause people to use marijuana, marijuana does not cause use of harder drugs.

I would also point out that California has allowed practically unregulated medical marijuana since 1996 without any perceptible increase in hard drug use. 22 other states and D.C. followed. Where are all the new cocaine and heroin users ushered in by these laws? But hey, it sure sounds scary. 

Accidents and fatalities on the highway will increase if marijuana is more available as it has in Colorado.

The Colorado Department of Transportation has called out HITDA for misusing state statistics in the law enforcement agencies' repeated efforts to advance this argument. In reality, very recent research by federal government’s own National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) found THC-positive drivers possess no elevated risk of motor vehicle accident, after adjusting for drivers’ age and gender. NHTSA acknowledges that this is the largest US-based crash risk assessment ever performed. They also note that their findings are ‘in line’ with other well-controlled studies also finding little to no increased risk.

If marijuana is medicine why isn't it prescribed?

This is one of my personal favorites. Here’s why not:

• The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) studies and approves or rejects drugs for prescription use.
• It doesn't study a substance for medical benefit if the drug is already scheduled as having no medical benefits - it needs to be rescheduled first as something with at least theoretical medical benefit.
• The DEA has the authority to reschedule marijuana, thus enabling the FDA to begin study in earnest, but refuses to do so until there are studies on its medical benefit.
• Any studies on medical benefit (or any other use) must use marijuana provided by the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA).
• NIDA has an institutional policy, imposed by Congress, to only make marijuana available for research if that research examines its harmful effects.

The lack of study is based on the federal government’s general policy to refuse to make it available for studies on its benefits – not because marijuana actually does lack medical benefit.

Crime went up in Colorado after legalization.

No, it did not. Well, some types of crime did go up, while other categories dropped. The claim that crime increased selectively reports the data in order to fit the theory, ignoring the crime rates that dramatically fell. In fact, it's probably too early to really know what has happened to crime rates, although street cops in Denver don't seem to think it made much difference.

As I mentioned in the comments section following Doug’s post, the real problem with these sorts of arguments is that they lack any solution except "maintain the status quo – or else!" All they really do is present the possible harm to society/kids/budgets/crime rates if things change. But in reality they have been changing for decades and the sky is still, well, in the sky.  If there really were horror stories to tell based on what states have been doing since reducing criminal laws since the 70’s, or adopting medical marijuana laws since the 90’s, or legalizing marijuana since 2013, we would not be arguing about hypotheticals. 

"A Pirate's Life for Me!"

The rush to get into the marijuana business has a lot in common with every other gold rush in history: some people are going to get extremely rich, but most people are going to wind up losing their shirts.  There are legitimate MJ-related businesses out there with solid business plans and good management, and some of them will wind up making money over the long haul.  There are also plenty of businesses whose owners, however honest and well-intentioned, are simply incompetent.  A few of those will become successful just by dumb luck.  And then there are some that are simple frauds.

The problem is always telling which is which.  It's a "pirates' game" out there:

    Pot smokers have a reputation for being laid back. But in the US, the pot market is anything but mellow. Legal sales of cannabis - it is legal for medical use in 23 states and for recreational use in four - grew 75 per cent last year to reach $US2.7 billion, according to ArcView Group. ArcView expects that 14 more states will legalise recreational use in the next five years.

    The stock market offers few ways to catch the buzz. Cannabis is still illegal at the federal level in the US, which means that companies profiting from cannabis are unable to get loans from FDIC-insured banks, and are often limited to state-specific markets. Most public marijuana companies are penny stocks traded on OTC markets. Some are prone to manipulation. Last May the US Security and Exchange Commission published a warning of possible scams involving marijuana-related micro-cap stocks. In August the SEC charged several stock promoters for manipulating marijuana stocks. The Marijuana Index (US reporting), which includes 60 cannabis-related stocks, peaked a year ago - and has since lost three-quarters of its value. Bummer.

    The Marijuana Index includes biotechs that research cannabis-derived pharmaceuticals. But these are pricey. Nasdaq-listed Insys Therapeutics, whose drugs include a synthetic cannabidiol formulation, trades at 22 times forward earnings. London-based GW Pharmaceuticals, known for its cannabinoid MS drug Sativex, is deeply lossmaking and trades at 37 times revenues. 

    While publicly listed options are paltry, the private markets offer more excitement, as venture capitalists invest in early-stage cannabis companies. Founders Fund, a prominent VC firm led by Peter Thiel, recently led a $US75m fundraising round for a cannabis-focused private equity firm, Privateer. Marijuana remains something of a pirates' game, at least for now.

If you're an ordinary individual investor of modest means, keep in mind that if you are the one being asked to invest, it's because richer and more knowledgeable people have passed on the deal.  This doesn't mean that it's a bad deal -- lots of smart rich people passed on investing in some of the world's greatest companies -- but keep the odds in mind when you're putting your money down.

Administration Drug Official: Don't Legalize Weed Unless You Want More Young Addicts

Doug Berman over at Marijuana Law, & Policy & Reform links to a new post by marijuana legalization opponent Derek Siegle, the executive director of the Ohio High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Program. 

The Ohio HIDTA, note, is a White House operation -- it's run by the Executive Office of the President, through the Office of National Drug Control Policy.  So Mr. Siegle's views are basically those of the Obama Administration -- as you can see from this White House site.

Despite the President's conciliatory rhetoric, the Administration isn't a friend of legalization.

ADDED:  Here's more on the operations of Ohio HIDTA.

 

Related articles

Why new White House drug policy chief opposes medical pot, legalization

"Mixed" Study Results for CBD and Seizures in Children

Wall Street Journal:  Marijuana Extract for Children With Epilepsy Is Questioned

    Studies are under way to test the effectiveness of a marijuana extract that has been hailed as a wonder drug by some parents whose children suffer severe forms of epilepsy. But as initial findings from several researchers trickle in, the results are proving mixed.

    . . .

    The early research results show that while some children appeared to improve after taking CBD, others didn’t respond, or even worsened. Doctors say the findings underscore the need for more research on the extract. CBD also has been studied as a potential treatment for other conditions, including schizophrenia and anxiety.

    “We don’t have enough data at this point to recommend marijuana products for families,” said Kevin Chapman, a neurologist at Children’s Hospital Colorado, outside of Denver, and co-author of a study released at an American Epilepsy Society meeting in December.

    . . .

    Some doctors worry that states are moving ahead without better data. “We have clear and well-established mechanisms to determine if therapies are safe and effective,” said Dr. Amy Brooks-Kayal, president of the American Epilepsy Society. “To have legislatures bypass that process before they have that information poses risks to people who choose to use that therapy.”

    State Rep. Allen Peake, the Republican sponsor of a CBD bill that passed the Georgia House in February, said he has no qualms about promoting the substance without more research. “Maybe it’s just anecdotal rather than a classic clinical trial, but this product works, and it’s changing the lives of these families,” he said. A similar measure is working its way through the state Senate.

    Dr. Chapman’s study, which involved a review of the health records of 75 children who took CBD, found that 33% of them had their seizures drop by more than half. However, 44% of the children experienced adverse effects after taking CBD, including increased seizures. Of the 30 patients whose records included the results of brain-wave tests, a less subjective measure of seizure activity, only three showed improvements in those exams.

    “It really wasn’t the high numbers we were hoping for,” Dr. Chapman said.

    Another study presented at the epilepsy meeting in December focused on a purified CBD extract called Epidiolex, made by GW Pharmaceuticals, which is seeking Food and Drug Administration approval for the medication. The FDA has granted it orphan drug status, a designation aimed to encourage drug development for rare conditions. Findings from the study, which were funded in part by GW, appeared more favorable than Dr. Chapman’s study. Of the 58 patients, 40% saw seizures decline by more than half and 10% of them became seizure-free. One patient had an increase in seizures.

    “We’re certainly encouraged by it,” said Orrin Devinsky, a neurologist at New York University leading the Epidiolex studies. But he added that it wasn’t a classic double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. He said he expects to start such a study in the next month or so.

    Other studies on CBD’s effectiveness at treating seizures also are being launched this year, including at the University of Colorado and the University of Alabama at Birmingham. To encourage further research on marijuana, the American Academy of Pediatrics in January urged the Drug Enforcement Administration to reclassify marijuana to a less-restrictive category.

It would certainly be a whole lot better if the FDA and the other organizations responsible for public health had got out in front on this issue.  Marijuana may or may not be the magic bullet some people claim it is, but if states weren't short-circuiting the process, would these studies be taking place now?  It's sad that we're experimenting on live children before we determine whether the stuff is effective, but until someone was using it on children the feds weren't about to start studying it.

Sad.

Bogus "Find a Law School Near You" Ad

This site (and the whole Law Professor Blog Network) is supported by advertising, and in general our advertisers are great people who you can rely on.  We don't have direct control over the ads, though, and therefore when a bogus one appears I'll try to warn you.

That's the case with the banner that says

LAW SCHOOLS NEAR YOU
Find Law Schools in Your City and Enroll New

This is simply false advertising, because in fact the web site has no links to law schools at all, and you can't enroll in law school online anyway.  The site asks for a lot of information from you before it even gives you the links to what it does have, which is mostly online colleges that have nothing to do with law.

If you want a free list of law schools with links, the Official Guide to ABA-Approved Law Schools is a great place to start.  If you want to know what law schools are in your area, here's a list of law schools by state.

"Mark Kleiman on How Legalized Pot Would Change America"

For some reason, I hadn't run across this older video from the always-provocative Mark Kleiman.  On the off-chance that you missed it too, here it is.  Enjoy.

 

Interview With the Devil?

It's always interesting when you find that people with whom you disagree profoundly actually seem to be intelligent and well-meaning . . . even when they're wrong. 

That seems to be the case with Kevin Sabet, the co-founder (with Patrick "Teddy Was My Dad" Kennedy, of Smart Approaches to Marijuana.  I'm on record as being much less terrified of Big Marijuana than I am of helicopter-borne SWAT teams with automatic weapons descending on weed patches, but this interview is certainly worth checking out:  "Meet the man trying to halt marijuana legalization."  Here's a sample:

    If we were a country with a history of being able to promote moderation in our consumer use of products, or promote responsible corporate advertising or no advertising, or if we had a history of being able to take taxes gained from a vice and redirect them into some positive areas, I might be less concerned about what I see happening in this country. But I think we have a horrible history of dealing with these kinds of things.

    The only reason a few of those products happen to be legal now, like alcohol and tobacco, is because of their cultural place in history. Alcohol, for example, dates back to before the Old Testament in terms of widespread use in Western culture.

    Yes, marijuana has been used in Western and other cultures for a very long time. I always get emails when this sort of thing is printed, pointing out that Chinese culture used marijuana a lot 3,000 years ago.

    But in terms of widespread use by the vast majority of the population, that is alcohol and, in the past century or two, tobacco. So we're sort of stuck with those things. And I don't think adding a third substance to be promoted by Madison Avenue is something that we want to do.

Law Schools May Perish, But Won't Change

My friend and former Latham & Watkins partner Mark Pulliam -- who's now retired in Austin but keeps current on legal education issues -- forwarded me this piece from George Leef at the Pope Institute for Higher Education Policy: "Death Spiral or Not, Law Schools Won’t Change."  Here's part of it:

    The essential truth is that our current model of legal education – law school lasting three years – is entirely artificial.

    Free-market competition did not decree that prospective lawyers cannot become good practitioners unless they accumulate about 90 credits in approved law classes. No, that was decreed by the American Bar Association, which used its lobbying clout (beginning in the 1920s) to get laws passed in nearly every state that keep people from attempting the bar exam unless they have first graduated from a law school accredited by the ABA.

    Until that time, most lawyers learned their profession as apprentices, and few of the law schools in existence insisted that students take three full years of courses. Some crucial lawyering skills are taught in law school, and some of the courses are vital, such as contracts, torts, and property. There isn’t any reason, however, why students couldn’t learn that in other settings.

    Students will never make the slightest use of most of the courses they take in quest of the necessary credits for their JDs. Moreover, law school catalogs are increasingly filled with politicized courses that are far more about the professor’s theories than black letter law. As law professor Charles Rounds argued in this Pope Center piece, students get “Bad Sociology, Not Law.”

    Even if . . . a top law school closes within three years, that won’t trigger radical change. There cannot be radical change as long as the three-year law school structure is enshrined in law. Just because some law schools collapse, that won’t repeal the laws propping up the law school cartel.

    Brown correctly maintains that the system “is unlikely to be changed from within,” but the only external force that will truly bring about change is competition. Presently, law schools compete for students and prestige, but they cannot compete by offering a shorter, more focused form of education that dispenses with much of the unnecessary bundle of courses.

Analytically, this is plainly correct.  The shackles on creatively that regulations put on law schools are viewed in legal academia as a bug, but as a feature.  Allowing competition, it is said, will encourage a race to the bottom in which the cherished values of legal academics (and the larger society of whom we are the self-appointed guardians) will be sacrificed on the altar of just creating competent lawyers who can help clients.  In other words, we'll simply become trade schools.

The sad thing is that not only do law faculties cling to these regulations -- after all, we're at least as likely to focus on our own financial interests as the average auto worker -- but that the practicing bar has been complicit in the process from day one.  Current lawyers themselves have very little reason to want to see an influx of new lawyers who are both really competent and relatively unsaddled with debt burdens.

Mr. Leef is, I believe, correct law school failures, even of long-standing, relatively prestigious schools, won't lead to change.  As W.H. Auden wrote:

We would rather be ruined than changed
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.

Change, if it  comes, will come from outside -- when some brute force more powerful than the American Bar Association and the state judiciaries (such as global competition) succeeds in lifting the regulations.

(BTW,  Mark has a great review today of two new books on Chevron's Nostromo-type adventures in Ecuador.  Check it out.)

Georgia Senate Committee Okays Limited MMJ Bill

It's a very, very narrow bill, but it's probably still significant that the Republican-dominated Georgia legislature is opening up a little to medical marijuana:  ‘Huge leap’ Thursday for Georgia medical marijuana proposal:

    A state Senate committee approved a bill Thursday that brings Georgia a step closer to joining other states that allow possession of medical marijuana.

    Having up to 20 ounces of a liquid form of medical marijuana under certain conditions would not be grounds for arrest under House Bill 1, by state Rep. Allen Peake, R-Macon. It also directs Georgia’s university system to undertake clinical studies on medical marijuana for severe seizures.

    “I think that we have successfully accomplished what we want to do in putting these two pieces together,” said state Sen. Renee Unterman, R-Buford, ahead of the voice vote of her Senate Health and Human Services Committee meeting Thursday.

    A total of 23 states have viable medical marijuana laws and delivery, according to the nonpartisan National Association of State Legislatures. Another 11 allow possession of a liquid rich in cannabidiol, or CBD, a non-psychoactive chemical in cannabis. It’s the kind of liquid that House Bill 1 aims to put in Georgians’ hands.

    Dozens of families seeking medical cannabis filled the hearing room and the hall outside. One was Macon dad Lindsey Crosby. His voice broke during testimony.

    “Katie would have been here today but she could not make the hour and 15 minute drive from Macon,” Crosby said of his 26-year-old daughter.

    She developed fibromyalgia as a teen, a condition that comes with severe pain. Katie Crosby, a college graduate, can’t work, can’t drive and is homebound.

    “We’ve had to lay it in the Great Physician’s hands,” Crosby said.

    “All the pain meds we’ve tried her on, none of them work,” he told the committee. “The legal drugs are not working.”

    Late last year, Katie’s mom drove the young woman to Colorado to try a CBD-rich liquid.

    “I had my daughter back for a while,” Crosby said. She could carry on a long conversation, walk, take a shower, visit friends. But since coming back home and coming off medical marijuana, she’s declined.

    During the committee hearing, Katie Crosby followed online. “I couldn’t testify today because I was up all night moaning in pain. I couldn’t breathe without wincing,” she tweeted.

    Her father begged the committee to legalize the only thing that he said gives his daughter substantial relief.

    The House version of the bill includes fibromyalgia in the list of cannabis-eligible diagnoses. The Senate committee declined it.

    “Fibromyalgia is a difficult diagnosis, and I think that will make it more difficult to pass,” said state Sen. Ben Watson, R-Savannah, a physician.

    Peake said he will confer with his House colleagues to see what they think of a bill that does not include fibromyalgia -- and patients such as Katie Crosby.

    “These are not some crackpot folks who have psychological problems,” Peake said.

    Even without access for fibromyalgia patients, Senate committee passage is “not a small step, but a huge leap,” he said.

    The bill comes with other conditions already approved by the state House.

    Any would-be user must have one of eight diagnoses. The first is cancer, either end-stage cancer or when a cancer treatment causes wasting or nausea. The others are: Lou Gehrig’s disease, multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s disease, mitochondrial disease, Parkinson’s disease and sickle cell disease. Then they must get the medical marijuana someplace where it is legal, such as Colorado. The liquid can have a maximum 5 percent THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana.

    Peake said two Colorado companies are preparing to ship that kind of lab-tested CBD oil to Georgia if possession is decriminalized.

There's not much point in having the nose of a camel inside a tent, but it is a good way to start getting the whole camel in.

Marijuana Legislation in the Lone Star State

I've been saying for a while that Texas is an under-appreciated battle state for marijuana legalization.  Chris's post on Wednesday shows the flurry of legislation that will come before the state legislature this year:

    In a state that many would consider one of the last to reform marijuana laws, so far there have been four medical marijuana bills presented, another four that would reduce penalties for possession to a non-jailable offense, and one that completely legalizes marijuana. Considering that two prominent law enforcement officials and Governor Perry came out last year indicating that reducing penalties wasn’t such a bad idea, it is possible Texas could begin reforming its laws sooner than many would have guessed.

There's a lot of other stuff going on.  I noted previously the birth of the Texas Cannabis Industry Association here in traditionally bright-red Fort Worth, and the folks at ComfyTree are putting on one of their Cannabis Academy programs right across the street from the Texas A&M Law School on March 28.

I think non-Texans often misunderstand the strong libertarian streak in Texas, and its long-standing dislike of being told what to do by the federal government.   The libertarian, small-government, pro-business case for legalization is getting some traction.  Maybe not enough to get something done this session -- the Texas legislature meets only every other year and there's a lot of business to get done -- but things are moving.

My advice:  When you see a Texas Republican who's introduced a bill that you don't think goes far enough, don't attack him!  Play nice, explain why his ideas are great, you admire his progressive idealism, and show him how his bill would be even better if this or that were done to it.  That's politics.

Philippines: Marijuana Performance Bond for British Pop Stars

This seems innovative, I suppose, but how effective might it be?

    British pop phenomenon One Direction paid a cash bond to the Philippines on Thursday that was imposed because of drug concerns, allowing them to play two concerts this weekend, the immigration bureau said.

    The bond, 200,000 pesos ($4,500) each for singers Zayn Malik and Louis Tomlinson, will be forfeited should the two get caught using or promoting illegal drugs, Bureau of Immigration spokeswoman Elaine Tan told AFP.

    The bond requirement was in response to an anti-drug watchdog group's request for "strict scrutiny" of Malik and Tomlinson before they were issued work permits, she said.

    "The condition is intended to protect the public interest should the band members commit any violation during their stay in the Philippines," she said.

    A video of Malik, 22 and Tomlinson, 23 apparently smoking marijuana in a car while on tour in Peru went viral last year and shocked the tattooed but baby-faced quintet's hordes of female fans.

    The group is scheduled to hold concerts at the seafront grounds of the Philippines' largest mall, which can accommodate tens of thousands of people, on March 21 and 22.

What's frankly puzzling is the idea that having to forfeit $9,000 -- about the same as the face price of a dozen Platinum tickets to a single One Direction concert -- is going to be a bigger deterrent to smoking weed than Philippine law.   I'm not an expert, but it looks to me like simple possession can get you 12 to 20 years in prison.

Related articles

One Direction pays 'marijuana bond' to Philippines

P400k cash bond required before One Direction is allowed to perform in PH

One Direction must pay 'weed bond' before Philippines concert

Attention NFL Players: Tomorrow is the Last Day to Smoke Marijuana

The National Football League Players Association is reminding players that the date for mandatory drug testing under the collective bargaining agreement is April 20.  After that, players will be subject to random drug testing under the CBA.  As marijuana residue remains in the system for 30 days, players who want to be sure they don't violate league drug policy have to stop ingesting the stuff after March 20.

Enjoy it now.

 

Marijuana and the 2016 Election

Lots of folks seem to think that marijuana legalization is going to be an important issue in the next presidential election year.   We keep seeing articles (like this one and this one)  on the question of what politicians -- Republicans in particular -- need to do about the weed issue of they want to improve their performance among millennial voters.

I haven't been optimistic that there's really much of an issue here.  I think President Obama confirmed that this week when he basically told voters that he's not about to support marijuana legalization and that they shouldn't be spending time worrying about that issue when there's more important stuff going on.   President-elect Hillary Clinton has long been an opponent, although she's made some noises recently that suggest that she might go as far as President Obama has in not actually interfering with state-level legalization.  

So it seems to me extremely unlikely that Democrats in 2016 will be peddling weed as an important issue at the national level.  And if the Democrats aren't doing that, why would Republicans want to take that on when they're already in what they feel is a target-rich environment?  Any GOP nominee who comes out clearly for legalization (e.g., Rand Paul) risks alienating a goodly chunk of the current base, which probably is a really bad idea in the primaries.

I could be wrong, of course.  It's possible that a year and a half from now the idea of legal weed is so popular that everybody will want to get on board.  But I suspect that we're going to have two nominees who each will do their best to avoid saying anything about it at all.  Imagine it's Secretary Clinton against Governor Jeb Bush -- a 69-year-old semi-liberal who never smoked a joint in her life, against a 63-year semi-conservative who sold joints to friends in college.  Would marijuana activists have a strong preference?

Indoor Marijuana and Climate Change

My Texas A&M colleague Professor Gina Warren has a good take on the environmental problems of marijuana over at Talking Points, When It Comes To Energy, Indoor Marijuana Isn’t Green.   Turns out that it's entirely possible that growing marijuana in January in Wisconsin greenhouses may not be the most environmentally friendly thing to be doing. 

Check out the whole thing.  Here's an excerpt:

    By some estimates, indoor marijuana cultivation is accountable for producing some 15 million metric tons of carbon emissions annually—the equivalent to the amount of emissions produced by three million American cars. Put another way, one single kilogram of processed marijuana is responsible for the same amount of emissions as driving a 44 mpg car across the country five times. How can this be? It’s due in most part to the significant amount of electricity required to grow marijuana indoors.

    With $6 billion in annual energy costs, the indoor marijuana industry is one of the most, if not the most, energy-intensive industry in the United States. It requires a large amount of electricity to power high-intensity heat lamps, to regulate temperature and humidity levels, and for ventilation, among other things. This energy consumption, which is expected to grow as the industry grows, results in significant greenhouse gas emissions.

    Under clandestine operations, indoor cultivators use inefficient and carbon dioxide-spewing on-site diesel and gasoline generators to meet their electricity needs. As states legalize indoor marijuana cultivation, producers will connect to the grid, thereby eliminating the need to use on-site generators. Unfortunately, connecting to the grid will do little to alleviate marijuana’s impacts on the climate given that at least two-thirds of the electricity transported on the grid is generated by the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas. Legalization will, however, provide policymakers with an opportunity to assess the industry’s energy usage and evaluate its climate risks.

    One way to ensure that the industry does not further contribute to an already dire situation is to require indoor marijuana cultivators to utilize only carbon-free electricity as a condition of licensing. Before you dismiss that as crazy talk, Boulder City and Boulder County in Colorado have done just that. To obtain and maintain, a license in Boulder, an indoor cultivator must obtain its energy from a renewable source. Cultivators can utilize on-site renewable generation, such as rooftop solar panels; subscribe to the Community Solar Garden; or find some other approved equivalent source.

How Money is Changing Marijuana Policy, Part 1

In the early days of World War II, it was not hard to see the benefits of joining a coalition in opposition to Hitler. He had an amazingly powerful machine that caused incredible amounts of damage, and it took a coalition of like-minded states to fight back. But when his army’s defeat became more about “when” than “if,” the countries that had previously relied on each other started to disagree on some key points. After all, a new world order would emerge, and the economic pie would have to be redistributed. Who got what became a very big deal, and before the sound of gunfire had even died down in the streets of Berlin, the Cold War had begun.

And so it goes in the war on marijuana. In the early days, a wide variety of groups could agree that marijuana prohibition was a huge disaster. 80 years after it began, we were the inheritors of a system that generated wasted futures, a huge financial burden, and a prohibition-industrial machine (think asset forfeiture, private jails, testing companies, and court-ordered drug treatment providers). Despite all the effort, there is no reason to think it reduced rates of consumption or the unregulated illegal market that feeds it. Opposing marijuana prohibition was its own rallying point.

But the questions have already shifted from “if” to “when” marijuana prohibition will end, and now the disagreements over the economic pie have begun. The context for these disagreements is in the form of marijuana policy: Should marijuana be legal only for seriously ill patients or should it be available to all adults? Should people have access to the entire plant, or only certain constituents (CBD)? Who can grow it — anybody, or only companies? Can business even exist in any formal way? How much should marijuana cultivation and distribution be regulated (if at all), and who should be in charge?  How should we handle edibles? And many, many other questions as well.

These policy decisions are being answered in a surprising variety of ways in no less than 35 states plus the District of Columbia - and now Guam. Generally, they have been made among three camps: grassroots organizations at the state or local level, nationally-oriented anti-prohibition groups, and finally, in the halls of the state capital buildings.

Now each of these camps is undergoing a dramatic shift that has been largely undetected over the past couple of years. I believe that 2015 may be remembered as a benchmark in the movement away from marijuana prohibition, because it is the year that money interests got more directly involved in driving policy decisions in each of the three camps.

There are really two sources for this money. The first is the emerging marijuana marketplace. These are the folks that happened to be in the right state at the right time and were able to function long enough without significant interference in order to get established in the business community. They are now starting to do what you do with money in the United States: exert influence. Business interests affecting policy is nothing new in America. What is new, is the businesses that are doing it. I don’t think anyone can fault them for picking up a playbook written long ago.

The other source, apparently coming into its own this year, is individual and business interests  that are not currently in a marijuana business or economy, but see the potential of the emerging market. These entities want to stake a claim and are willing to invest heavily in the change needed to get it. To return to the WWII analogy, they are joining the fight in the streets of Berlin because they know what part of town they want to call their own.  

The following posts on this topic will take each of my so-called “camps” (grassroots organizations, national groups, and state legislators) and look at how business interests are already starting to shift the direction these groups take in furthering their own goals. I suspect that as the marijuana movement continues to evolve, these interests will play an increasingly important role in shaping the future of policy, regulation, and the law. 

Two More Medical Marijuana Bills Presented in Texas

Two new bills have been presented for consideration in by the Texas legislature this session. These are companion bills, in which the same language is presented in both the House and Senate at the same time. If either is adopted, it would establish a comprehensive medical marijuana program similar to those that have already been adopted in 23 states and the District of Columbia. Rep. Marisa Márquez is sponsoring HB 3785, introduced by in the House, and Sen. José Menéndez has introduced SB 1839. In the panacea of different regulatory models, the framework most closely resembles that of Nevada.

These bills are quite a bit different than another that was presented earlier this session by Rep. Stephanie Klick, HB 892. (There is also a companion bill in the Senate, SB 339.) This approach focuses on one of the active ingredients in marijuana, cannabidiol, or CBD. While these CBD bills are no doubt well-intentioned, they would exclude most conditions that are treatable by “whole plant” medical marijuana. Worse, they contains many serious defects that would create an unworkable system, including the requirement that doctors prescribe marijuana, a Schedule 1 substance - a serious "no-no" in medical marijuana laws. (I have a quick and dirty analysis of why CBD bills often miss their mark here, including this Texas bill.)

With 25 jurisdictions having full medical marijuana programs (including D.C. and Guam), and another 12 with some form of CBD law, why is this news? Well, because this is Texas, and it's been on a roll this year. In a state that many would consider one of the last to reform marijuana laws, so far there have been four medical marijuana bills presented, another four that would reduce penalties for possession to a non-jailable offense, and one that completely legalizes marijuana. Considering that two prominent law enforcement officials and Governor Perry came out last year indicating that reducing penalties wasn’t such a bad idea, it is possible Texas could begin reforming its laws sooner than many would have guessed. 

Connecticut Ruling is Great News – in Connecticut

There was a splash in the news yesterday as the Connecticut Supreme Court issued a ruling that found that individuals who had been previously convicted of marijuana possession – an offense that was decriminalized in 2011 – could have those convictions erased. As laws change around the country, there is a large group of folks with records that seem anachronistic in light of changing attitudes. For many, removing records for offenses most people no longer find offensive is a no brainer.  

Unfortunately, unless an exception is made within the law, convictions stand even when the law that led to the conviction changes. It’s like a default grandfathering provision for criminal records.  

While the Connecticut ruling is a positive thing for thousands of people saddled with harmful criminal records (which can affect job prospects, housing opportunities, and student loans for a lifetime), the court’s opinion hinged on a state statute that specifically allows for expungement (or expunction for you Texans). §54-142d states:  

Whenever any person has been convicted of an offense in any court in this state and such offense has been decriminalized subsequent to the date of such conviction, such person may file a petition with the superior court . . . for an order of erasure, and the Superior Court or records center of the Judicial Department shall direct all police and court records and records of the state’s or prosecuting attorney pertaining to such case to be physically destroyed. [Emphasis supplied.]

 A recent Quinnipiac poll found that likely Connecticut voters support allowing adults to legally possess small amounts of marijuana for personal use by 63 to 34%. They also support reducing the penalties of small amounts of illegal drugs for personal use from a felony to a misdemeanor by  67 to 28% percent. But the court’s analysis wasn’t about the right or wrong of sticking people with these marks on their record. It was a fight over whether the 2011 law was “decriminalization” or “legalization.” The appellate court found that the 2011 law was actually legalization and therefore priors could not be expunged. The supremes disagreed.  

 This is great news for Connecticuters, but without a similar operation of law in another state, it’s hard to know how far this ruling will go. Connecticut is not the only jurisdiction with this type of law. D.C. just minted one, and no doubt there are others. But without one of these little beauties, I think it would be difficult to repeat what happened in CT.

Hopefully voters will be more open to decrim laws that include expungement provisions. Show-Me Cannabis in Missouri will have a chance to test that in their voter initiative language queuing up for the 2016 general election.  

The Future of Edibles Regulations

Food products infused with marijuana extract present an interesting challenge for regulators. State laws, whether passed through the voter initiative or the legislative process, usually treat edible products as something of an afterthought, and it often falls on the regulatory agencies to sort out the specifics. It was really only when Colorado’s program began to gain steam that it became clear regulatory models that existed at the time fell short.

As stories of look-alike products, emergency room visits and panic attacks started to play out in the press - hyped further by the fear mongers - some state governments began to consider how to handle edibles. As the industry continues to leap ahead, regulators are still playing catch-up.

A newly-published opinion piece by Ph.D's Robert J. MacCoun and Michelle M. Mello, J.D., entitled “Half-Baked — The Retail Promotion of Marijuana Edibles,” reminds us that nearly 20 years after the passage of the first state medical marijuana law, academics still can’t get over marijuana-related puns. It also provides a quick and useful summary of the various regulatory approaches that could lie just ahead for those in the edibles game.

The authors identify several different ways standards could be brought to bear on edibles manufacturers. Whether it’s though the FDA (that “F” stands for “food”), the DEA, the states, courts, or the companies who think their brand names may be at risk - the path is yet to be seen. States are starting to go there, led by Colorado and Washington. And we have just seen the beginning of corporate interests going after the look-alikes. I am not aware of any tort-based suits against edibles manufacturers except one case involving involuntary intoxication at an event. But if it hasn’t started yet, it’s just a matter of time as allegedly injured parties and their lawyers see potentially deep pockets from edibles manufacturers.

It seems to me that state regulation is the best solution. Yet ironically, it appears that by the time states start to work on regs, the businesses that would be subject to regulatory oversight are becoming increasingly capable of pushing back against proposed regulations they consider overly burdensome.

Part of the solution is educating consumers, but regulation is a necessary part of the equation. My question is, if states are unable to arrive at a framework that avoids the bad press and unintended consequences of unregulated (or underregulated) edibles, does anybody really think the Fed, the courts, or the corporations won’t step in to fill the perceived gap?