Cannabis News

His_Highness

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king
I have been drinking alcohol and smoking pot for 50 years now and I have a pretty good idea of the effects, on me and on others, of doing both, separately and together. And while there is no doubt that the effects and interference with driving skills and requirements are dramatically worse after alcohol consumption, anyone who says that consuming cannabis has no effect on their driving skills is lying to you and maybe themselves (the scarier option). I have watched stoned people make bad driving decisions they would never have made while not high, and I have experienced making similar mistakes myself.
Personally I will not drive after consuming alcohol, and I try to avoid driving for at least a couple hours after getting high, tho I find myself breaking my own taboo on this more often than I like to admit. But I rarely get VERY stoned anymore, and a light buzz is less of concern to me, but it IS a concern and at least I recognize that and drive accordingly.

Therefore I am anxious for law enforcement to have a real cannabis test that can measure cannabis inebriation as accurately and effectively as possible. Most of the tests currently being used are NOT that, and are totally inadequate for roadside testing and are more adept at identifying a pot consumer than any evaluation of current state, and that is obviously worthless. This test, while not being able to measure how high you may be, at least (if it works) it can measure how recently you smoked and that is likely more instructive and useful than something that merely finds cannabis in your system. I am not defending this particular test, because we don't yet know how well it will work, but I have ZERO problem with it's potential development and use.

We DO need something to identify stoned drivers, and I am good with creating a test that will do that, and putting it in the field. I just can not accept implementing testing that does nothing but discriminate against cannabis users.

Couldn't agree more. There was a thread where this was debated in detail:

http://fuckcombustion.com/threads/driving-whilst-high.19329/

There are two camps....

1.) Those who argue that they have been at it for a long time so they are able to drive high...Those who feel the increased anxiety of being high causes them to concentrate more which in turn makes them more "careful" and "safer" ..... Those who site studies and demonstrations showing that being high doesn't increase the likelihood of a driving mistake.

2.) Those who believe being high can adversely affect their driving and don't care how big or small the impairment so they avoid driving high.
 
His_Highness,
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Stu

Maconheiro
Staff member
Couldn't agree more. There was a thread where this was debated in detail:

http://fuckcombustion.com/threads/driving-whilst-high.19329/

There are two camps....

1.) Those who argue that they have been at it for a long time so they are able to drive high...Those who feel the increased anxiety of being high causes them to concentrate more which in turn makes them more "careful" and "safer" ..... Those who site studies and demonstrations showing that being high doesn't increase the likelihood of a driving mistake.

2.) Those who believe being high can adversely affect their driving and don't care how big or small the impairment so they avoid driving high.
Some of you may have noticed that replies to this thread have been moved to an existing thread. Please direct any replies here: http://fuckcombustion.com/threads/driving-whilst-high.19329/

Thanks

:peace:
 

cybrguy

Putin is a War Criminal
Illinois police: Keep pot illegal — or we’ll kill the dog


Radley Balko
As Illinois lawmakers debate whether to become the 10th state to legalize recreational marijuana, a few law enforcement officials in the state have put forth this bizarre argument:

If Illinois legalizes marijuana for recreational use, law enforcement officials fear job losses for hundreds of officers — specifically, the four-legged kind.

Police agencies spend thousands of dollars and months of training to teach dogs how to sniff out and alert officers to the presence of marijuana, heroin, cocaine and other drugs. If pot use becomes legal, the dogs would likely either have to be retrained — which some handlers say is impossible or impractical — or retired.

“The biggest thing for law enforcement is, you’re going to have to replace all of your dogs,” said Macon County Sheriff Howard Buffett, whose private foundation paid $2.2 million in 2016 to support K-9 units in 33 counties across Illinois. “So to me, it’s a giant step forward for drug dealers, and it’s a giant step backwards for law enforcements and the residents of the community.”

Later in the story, a K-9 trainer suggests some or most of the dogs will need to euthanized.

(By the way, if you think it’s weird that a sheriff would have a “personal foundation” capable of spending more than $2 million on drug dog units for other police departments, so did I. It turns out that Sheriff Buffett is the middle child of the billionaire Warren Buffett.)

There’s a lot to unpack here. First, I’d dispute Buffett’s assertion that legalization is a “giant step forward for drug dealers.” This is true only if you consider retailers who sell marijuana legally to be “drug dealers.” If by “drug dealers” you mean cartels and kingpins who sell the drug on the black market and use violence to settle disputes, legalization is actually pretty bad for them.

But let’s get back to the dogs. Even if it were true that marijuana legalization in Illinois would mean that all drug dogs in the state had to be euthanized, that isn’t an argument to keep marijuana illegal. I’m a dog person. But the drug war is not a make-work program for canines. Second, nine states have already legalized medical marijuana. As far as I know, there hasn’t been mass euthanization of drug dogs in those states. Third, the law enforcement officials in the article argue that even if the dogs aren’t euthanized, they have been very expensive to purchase and train, and replacing them or retraining them to disregard marijuana and alert only to other drugs will be expensive. This, again, is not a persuasive argument for keeping marijuana illegal. The debate is really over whether we should be locking people up over a mostly harmless drug. If it’s wrong to do so, the fact that we’ve already spent a lot of money on a system to enforce a policy we now believe to be wrong is an argument against continuing that policy, not in favor of it. Put another way, if you think marijuana prohibition is justified, then spending money on drug dogs is justified. If you think marijuana prohibition is immoral, how much money we’ve already spent on enforcing that policy has no bearing on whether we should continue spending money on that policy in the future.

But if we are going to talk about cost, do you know what else is expensive? Arresting and jailing people for pot. The Chicago Reader estimated that in 2010, Cook County alone spent more than $78 million arresting and prosecuting people only for possession of marijuana. If we’re really worried about the golden years of drug dogs, that kind of money could purchase them a pretty nice retirement community. I’m thinking bubbling streams, platinum fire hydrants every few feet and a lifetime supply of top-shelf kibble.

But I want to address another part of this story that isn’t getting much attention. I’ve written quite a bit about drug dogs in Illinois, and it turns out they’re pretty terrible at detecting drugs. In 2011, the Chicago Tribune published a review of drug dog searches conducted over three years by police departments in the Chicago suburbs. Just 44 percent of dog alerts led to the discovery of actual contraband. For Hispanic drivers, the success rate dipped to 27 percent. The following year, I obtained the records of an Illinois State Police drug dog for an 11-month period in 2007 and 2008. In nearly 30 percent of cases where the dog “alerted” no drugs at all were found. In about 75 percent of cases, the dog alerted either to no drugs or to what police officers later described as “residue,” which basically means no measurable quantity of a drug and not a significant-enough amount to merit criminal charges. Only 10 percent of the alerts resulted in a seizure of a large-enough quantity of drugs to charge someone with a felony.

This is pretty consistent with statistics from other states, as well as one fascinating academic study, which have shown that drug dogs are far more likely to merely confirm the hunches and suspicions of their handlers than they are to independently detect illicit drugs. The dogs’ high error rates often make them no more accurate than a coin flip. The problem of course is that the entire purpose of the Fourth Amendment is to protect us from searches based solely on a government official’s hunch or suspicion. There’s a reason some legal scholars call drug dogs “probable cause on a leash.”

The K9 trainers I’ve interviewed over the years have told me that drug dogs could actually be trained to only alert when there is a significant quantity of an illicit drug — that is, to ignore “residue.” The reason they aren’t is that police departments don’t want them trained that way. They want dogs that alert as often as possible. They want the dogs to err on the side of false alerts.

Why would police want a dog that falsely alerts? That’s the exact question the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia asked in a drug dog case a few years ago. The answer is incentives. Searches can lead to evidence of other illegal activity. One incentive is that police officers, particular those in drug enforcement, often evaluated based on the raw numbers of arrests. More searches mean more opportunities to make arrests.

But the more important incentive is civil-asset forfeiture. If the police find even the slightest bit of pot, sometimes even just residue, they can often justify taking a driver’s cash, jewelry or even the car itself. The owner of the property — even if completely innocent — then must endure a number of legal and procedural barriers to getting the property back. Take, for example, the K-9 whose records I reviewed several years ago.

In one case, the discovery of 2 grams of marijuana led to the seizure of $5,190 in cash. In another, 2 grams of pot led to the arrest of the vehicle’s seven occupants and seizure of the $2,000 they had between them. In another, 3 grams of marijuana led to 9 arrests and seizure of $2080. In yet another, one motorist caught with 1.2 grams of pot was arrested and forfeited more than $9,000. Another motorist wasn’t arrested, but had more than $2,000 in cash taken from him because the officer found what he says in the report was marijuana residue. It’s unclear if the residue was either subjected to a field test or taken to a lab for testing.

So over 11 months, this drug dog with an error rate of somewhere between 30 percent and 70 percent may have subjected dozens of people to illegal searches, but the pooch also brought in $11,000 for the state police. The dog is, er, a cash cow.
 

cybrguy

Putin is a War Criminal
Oops, there was a little more....

One particularly lucrative part of the state for police is the I-55/I-70 corridor near the town of Collinsville, which brings in a half-million dollars or more per year for local police. A local police officer pulled over Terrance Huff in 2011 while he was returning from a “Star Trek” fan convention. After the dog “alerted,” the cops searched Huff’s car from top to bottom. They found only what they called “shake,” or marijuana residue. K9 trainers who watched the video of the stop say the dog and officer interactions look like a dog that alerted on command, rather than when the dog detected an illicit substance. Huff later sued. During discovery for his lawsuit, he learned that the officer who pulled him over sometimes “trained” his dog by rubbing marijuana on the bumpers of cars parked in motel parking lots. If those cars were to be later pulled over and sniffed — voila! — instant probable cause for a search.

The police in Illinois aren’t worried about the well-being of drug dogs. They’re worried about the well-being of drug cops. Lots of law enforcement jobs — K9 cops, drug task forces, narcotics detectives — depend on the government’s continued pursuit of marijuana. So, too, do the revenue streams of many police departments and prosecutors’ offices. When there’s a threat to that revenue, they’ll do anything to protect it, including making threats to euthanize dogs, or warning that if we dare to stop cops from taking money from people without due process, we’ll soon see headless bodies hanging from bridges.

Illinois cops have been using their police dogs to violate the rights of people living in or passing through that state for decades. If marijuana legalization puts a damper on that practice, that’s a feature of reform, not a bug.
 

MinnBobber

Well-Known Member
Cost announced for new GW Pharm cannabis product (Epidiolex) for epilepsy:

"U.K. company GW Pharmaceuticals has revealed how much their new epilepsy drug Epidiolex will cost. Epidiolex was approved for use in the U.S. by the Food and Drug Administration in June. The drug is the first medication derived from cannabis to receive approval from the agency.

Cost Revealed in Investor Call
In a conference call with investors on Tuesday, the company announced that Epidiolex will cost each patient about $32,500 per year. The estimate is based on assumptions of average patient weight and dosage. The company said the cost was comparable to that of other drugs used to treat severe forms of epilepsy.

During the conference call, GW Pharmaceutical CEO Justin Gover said Epidiolex will provide a reliable and safe cannabinoid treatment for patients."
............................................................................................................................................................................
Sweet Jesus, no offense, but $32,500 per year is an obscene amount vs the cost of the real thing, and a much better thing at that!
 

Copacetic

Somewhere North of The Wall
Cost announced for new GW Pharm cannabis product (Epidiolex) for epilepsy:

"U.K. company GW Pharmaceuticals has revealed how much their new epilepsy drug Epidiolex will cost. Epidiolex was approved for use in the U.S. by the Food and Drug Administration in June. The drug is the first medication derived from cannabis to receive approval from the agency.

Cost Revealed in Investor Call
In a conference call with investors on Tuesday, the company announced that Epidiolex will cost each patient about $32,500 per year. The estimate is based on assumptions of average patient weight and dosage. The company said the cost was comparable to that of other drugs used to treat severe forms of epilepsy.

During the conference call, GW Pharmaceutical CEO Justin Gover said Epidiolex will provide a reliable and safe cannabinoid treatment for patients."
............................................................................................................................................................................
Sweet Jesus, no offense, but $32,500 per year is an obscene amount vs the cost of the real thing, and a much better thing at that!

And our glorious prime minister Theresa Mays husband Philip Mays company is the biggest investor in Epidiolex's pocket (although it's more a case of Epidiolex being in his pocket).

Gross and egregious hypocrisy is standard practice for top politicians though, so we shouldn't be surprised.
Especially when we're talking our Tory overlords, who specialize in exploitation.
32 grand? A BARGAIN when the alternatives are to suffer horribly with serious epilepsy or risk incarceration.
:rant::bang:
 

looney2nz

Research Geek, Mad Scientist
And our glorious prime minister Theresa Mays husband Philip Mays company is the biggest investor in Epidiolex's pocket (although it's more a case of Epidiolex being in his pocket).

Gross and egregious hypocrisy is standard practice for top politicians though, so we shouldn't be surprised.
Especially when we're talking our Tory overlords, who specialize in exploitation.
32 grand? A BARGAIN when the alternatives are to suffer horribly with serious epilepsy or risk incarceration.
:rant::bang:

the situation in the UK seriously blows :(
perhaps the Canadians will shame them?
the upstart colonies will get there eventually (we hope)

in California, we're scratching our heads over $32.5K a year vs probably $3.25K commercially produced in the state.

Pretty outrageous, the feds license the U.S. 'Cannabis' Patent to GW, it receives FDA approval, all the while Jeff Sessions made sure to keep CBD classified as Schedule 1 in the Controlled Substances Act here (which is where heroin is classified, and ironically THC).

So they are selling a product that is illegal on the federal level, from a patent that explicitly calls out it's medical application, while simultaneously denying that it has ANY medical value whatsoever.
Some impressive damn pretzel contortions!

at the very least our governments collectively need a cranial enema :(
 

C No Ego

Well-Known Member
the situation in the UK seriously blows :(
perhaps the Canadians will shame them?
the upstart colonies will get there eventually (we hope)

in California, we're scratching our heads over $32.5K a year vs probably $3.25K commercially produced in the state.

Pretty outrageous, the feds license the U.S. 'Cannabis' Patent to GW, it receives FDA approval, all the while Jeff Sessions made sure to keep CBD classified as Schedule 1 in the Controlled Substances Act here (which is where heroin is classified, and ironically THC).

So they are selling a product that is illegal on the federal level, from a patent that explicitly calls out it's medical application, while simultaneously denying that it has ANY medical value whatsoever.
Some impressive damn pretzel contortions!

at the very least our governments collectively need a cranial enema :(
it is the fucking Twilight Zone... plain and simple pure confusion and subterfuge
 

grampa_herb

Epstein didn't kill himself
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florduh

Well-Known Member

CarolKing

Singer of songs and a vapor connoisseur
'Budtenders,' edibles chefs among fastest-growing jobs in multi-billion dollar legal cannabis industry
Randy Tucker, Cincinnati EnquirerPublished 10:00 a.m. ET Aug. 15, 2018 | Updated 1:22 p.m. ET Aug. 15, 2018


Cannabis jobs have become the fastest-growing job sector in the country Randy Tucker, Cincinnati

:uhh: -> "stoners need not apply,"

There seems to be a pretty high turn over in my area regarding bud tenders. I live in WA state. You want to have someone you kinda know and trust when asking questions. I find most of them to be less knowledgeable than myself. Also they know nothing about medical cannabis. Those suffering from conditions in my area are left on their own.
 

GetLeft

Well-Known Member
My sense is that Wolf's a reasonable character. It's been clear all along that PA was never going to beat surrounding states to the punch. It's pretty amazing that the state has made the adjustments it has with its med program after such a foolish start. Not to mention the current mess with how the growing licenses are being handled. The gov might be smart in suggesting that we let the med business get sorted out before we start mixing in the rec business. Once the key actors are in place with the med side, the rec will be quick to follow. Also, it's election year in a swing state :|
 

florduh

Well-Known Member
Inside The Trump Administration’s Secret War On Weed

Our Great and Glorious Dear Leader has launched a committee to overturn the National tide towards marijuana legalization. The purpose is to inform the public of the "Dangers" of legalization and the many "failures" of legalized State markets.

My favorite part is that this committee is explicitly instructed to ignore any data that shows positive impacts from legalization. The Admin knows public opinion on weed is growing more positive. This is their attempt to counteract that.

Luckily these chucklefucks have zero credibility, but this is a troubling report regardless.
 

cybrguy

Putin is a War Criminal
I must say I am somewhat surprised that the Gangster and chief, rather than trying to kill a lucrative market, isn't just trying to make sure he gets his oversize piece. I mean, that IS what he is about after all...
 

florduh

Well-Known Member
I must say I am somewhat surprised that the Gangster and chief, rather than trying to kill a lucrative market, isn't just trying to make sure he gets his oversize piece. I mean, that IS what he is about after all...

Because counting on an emerging market, like marijuana, is riskier than protecting established markets like pharma, alcohol, private prisons, drug testing, and "treatment" centers.

It's also likely that our Dear Leader doesn't give a fuck about any of this. It's probably being driven by the old school prohibitionists he surrounds himself with.
 
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Little Bill

Oldest stoner on FC
Because counting on an emerging market, like marijuana, is riskier than protecting established markets like pharma, alcohol, private prisons, drug testing, and "treatment" centers.

It's also likely that our Dear Leader doesn't give a fuck about any of this. It's probably being driven by the old school prohibitionists he surrounds himself with.

Word!
 

grampa_herb

Epstein didn't kill himself
California police fight statewide marijuana deliveries

Michael r. Blood, Associated Press
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A growing dispute over where legal marijuana can be delivered in California is unsettling the nation's largest pot market.

Police chiefs on Friday lined up against a proposed state rule that critics say would allow unchecked home marijuana deliveries anywhere in California — even in communities that have banned cannabis sales.
 

C No Ego

Well-Known Member
California police fight statewide marijuana deliveries

Michael r. Blood, Associated Press
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A growing dispute over where legal marijuana can be delivered in California is unsettling the nation's largest pot market.

Police chiefs on Friday lined up against a proposed state rule that critics say would allow unchecked home marijuana deliveries anywhere in California — even in communities that have banned cannabis sales.
Their Intrastate regulatory parameters need not pass the Front Door ! our doors in our Homes are not interstate /intrastate Lines Man!
 

florduh

Well-Known Member
California police fight statewide marijuana deliveries

Michael r. Blood, Associated Press
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A growing dispute over where legal marijuana can be delivered in California is unsettling the nation's largest pot market.

Police chiefs on Friday lined up against a proposed state rule that critics say would allow unchecked home marijuana deliveries anywhere in California — even in communities that have banned cannabis sales.

Communities that banned weed sales are who need the delivery services the most.

And they didn't buy the weed from a business in that community. Everything is on the level.
 

CarolKing

Singer of songs and a vapor connoisseur
No matter what the vote from the citizens the law makers in our states are able to impose areas where our votes are not honored. So many areas where cannabis can’t be sold imposes other people’s beliefs against the votes of the people. I’m tired of this BS, along with states that don't allow flowers and make medical patients use a more expensive product such as oils - like Florida.
 
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