Pennsylvania could potentially become the 25th state to legalize medical marijuana, thanks to the passage of Senate Bill 3 in the state House of Representatives this month.
The bill, which was supported by Democrats and Republicans alike, will make legal the purchase of marijuana for the treatment of serious medical conditions. With doctor recommendation, patients will be able to acquire a special ID card, which will allow them to purchase strains of cannabis that are deemed appropriate for their diagnoses.
This legislation follows former mayor of Philadelphia Michael Nutter’s decriminalization of small-scale marijuana possession in 2014. As a result of the decriminalization, those caught in possession of less than 30 grams of marijuana are merely fined $25 and given a citation. Anyone caught smoking in public is either fined $100 or required to complete nine hours of community service.
Mayor Jim Kenney also supports this decriminalization as he spearheaded the 2014 bill signed by Nutter. Kenney has even said that he would be “open” to the taxation and regulation of recreational marijuana if it were to be legalized in Pennsylvania, according to a Philly.com article.
That being said, possession and consumption of marijuana is still a criminal offense in the state of Pennsylvania and on the federal level. The expected passage of Senate Bill 3, also known as the Medical Marijuana Act, could be the first step toward change in the rest of the state.
However, unlike medical marijuana legislation in some other states, this bill only covers marijuana as legal treatment for what it cites as “serious medical conditions.” Some conditions that satisfy this requirement include cancer, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease and autism. According to the bill, though, some of the revenues from taxation on marijuana growers’ sales to dispensaries will be allocated to research into other conditions that may be treated with the substance.
Also limited are the forms in which medical marijuana may be sold and consumed. Approved forms include pills and oils. Smoking is not included in the definition of “medical use” of cannabis.
Only residents of Pennsylvania will be eligible for consideration for a medical marijuana identification card, and health insurers will not be required to provide coverage for the purchase of medical cannabis.
Regardless of its limitations, advocates of marijuana legalization, like the Marijuana Policy Project, consider the expected passage of this bill a victory.
Once upon a time it was my dream job to travel the world and write reviews of people, products and cultural processes. Now, there is nothing I would enjoy more than a Cannabis World Tour. I want to see how the world embraces this plant that has been suppressed for so long. It is my mission to educate others on the benefits of the plant and the great economy that comes with it.
Oklahoma and Nebraska complained that pot purchased legally in Colorado is being transported illegally into or through their states, overwhelming police and courts dealing with a sudden influx of smugglers. An ounce of high-quality marijuana selling for $200 at a state-licensed Colorado store can fetch three times that on the East Coast black market, police say.
The Supreme Court refused Monday to referee a simmering dispute between Colorado and two neighboring states over the cross-border impact of marijuana legalization, heartening legalization advocates who feared the high court could have rolled back their gains.
Because he’s a scientist, not a back-slapping venture capitalist, Mowgli Holmes loathes using the term networking to describe even the portion of his job that entails shaking hands in the cannabis industry. But it was networking that brought the chief scientific officer of Phylos Bioscience in Portland, Oregon, to Las Vegas in November 2014 to attend the Marijuana Business Conference and Expo—and to smoke a massive joint with one of the cannabis movement’s legends, Ohio lawyer Don Wirtshafter.
Holmes had it on good information that Wirtshafter was sitting on a collection of hundreds of very old apothecary bottles filled with antique cannabis tinctures—relics from before marijuana prohibition came along in 1937, courtesy of the weed-criminalizing Marihuana Tax Act. Holmes, a 43-year-old geneticist with a doctorate in microbiology and immunology from Columbia University, desperately wanted those bottles—at least what viable strands of DNA might lie inside of them—for a project that has become his life’s work: an ambitious effort to sequence the DNA of every different kind of cannabis in the world.
It’s a quest that could change almost everything we know about marijuana. At this point, most cannabis is produced in the dark, then sold to recreational consumers and medical patients with catchy labels that are nearly always misleading. When Holmes completes his mission, he’ll be able to take any sample of pot DNA and compare it with the most robust database of cannabis strains ever assembled, bringing unprecedented clarity to the marijuana market, from the grow to the dispensary.
First, though, Holmes needed to do a little more networking. And in the cannabis industry, that can sometimes mean getting very high.
Wirtshafter wanted to know the scientist wasn’t a Monsanto in sheep’s clothing. When the two met in the lobby of the Rio Casino, Wirtshafter had already heard of Holmes and his project. Still, the best way to prove yourself in the marijuana world is age-old and simple—you burn one. So on the last day of the conference, Holmes found himself and his business partner, Nishan Karassik, in Wirtshafter’s hotel room, burnishing their street cred with childhood tales from the hippie mecca that is the Oregon Country Fair and puffing on an enormous joint. Seven weeks later, Holmes packed his lab coat and tweezers, then caught a flight to Columbus, Ohio.
Political Extermination
Holmes grew up in Eugene, a small city in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, home to conservative types descended from logging families and ultra-liberals who drape “Free Tibet” rainbow flags on their porches and wear tie-dyed T-shirts to the Saturday market. Holmes went to Vassar College, majored in philosophy and then moved back to Oregon to play the drums in several rock bands in Portland. After five years of that, he headed to New York once more to study microbiology at Columbia University.
In graduate school, his focus was on viruses, specifically HIV research. But when he returned again to Oregon, which in 2013 was a year away from becoming the nation’s fourth state to legalize marijuana for recreational use, he found a new career path staring straight at him: cannabis genomics. “There’s a whole new industry exploding all around it,” he says. Plus, “in every other academic field, you have to find the tiniest little corner of the world to study. It’s almost impossible to find something nobody else has done, and immediately someone is competing with you. Here, we have an entire organism that there’s basically no body of knowledge on…. This doesn’t happen in science, where you have a plant like this that’s been cordoned off from research.”
It was a risk to link his career to the study of marijuana, even with weed legal in Colorado and Washington. Would he still be taken seriously as a scientist, or would he be forever pigeonholed in pot? Plus, there were major roadblocks: Because cannabis is illegal at the federal level, the only way to legally research it is to use cannabis grown by the National Institute on Drug Abuse in Mississippi. That pot is “notoriously crappy,” Holmes says, and useless to his project. Researchers are also required to get approval from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Food and Drug Administration. Federally funded universities are reticent to allow laboratories they host to have anything to do with cannabis.
Holmes’s lab and its 10 full-time employees are housed by Oregon Health and Science University, which does rely on federal funding. But he and Karassik, who have been friends since they were 4 years old, have found a clever way to avoid legal trouble: They don’t handle marijuana itself, just its DNA. As for his reputation, Holmes says, “people don’t even giggle anymore,” he says. “They just go, ‘Tell me about the financials.’”
The samples come from all over the world, via often fascinating treasure hunts conducted largely by word-of-mouth research. There are two or three other labs working on cannabis genome projects, but none have collected nearly as many specimens as Phylos, and most of their samples come from marijuana dispensaries, not from original landraces, Holmes says. He has collected nearly 2,000 specimens so far and entered 1,500 of them into a software program that organizes the DNA into clusters, outputting a visual representation that looks like a constellation of stars. Each dot represents a strain, and the distances and lines between the dots show how they’re related to one another.
A woman samples the scent and stickiness of various strains at a marijuana dispensary. With a robust cannabis genome database, buyers would be able to fine-tune their relationship with different strains and have a better idea of what they’re using. LYNN JOHNSON/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE
The rarest and most valuable samples are old and original—landraces compiled from herbariums, museums and collectors in countries like Colombia, Thailand, Mexico, Afghanistan, India, Uruguay, Namibia and South Africa. After months of coaxing, Holmes convinced legendary breeders David Watson and Robert Clarke to let him take samples from their collection in Amsterdam. Now he is trying to acquire a 2,700-year-old strain from northern China.
Holmes arrived at Wirtshafter’s white Victorian in rural Athens County, Ohio, on a sunny, ice-cold January day, wearing a lab coat and carrying a box filled with tweezers, a scalpel, a digital scale, sample tubes and blue rubber gloves. He had a flight to catch, which left him only a few hours to collect all the samples. “You’ll never have enough time,” Wirtshafter told him.
Wirtshafter acquired his collection from the wife of a former federal employee. These jars were supposed to be destroyed after prohibition, but the rogue government worker decided to keep a huge collection of the tinctures. He made his wife promise not to sell them until 10 years after his death. Whatever the motive for that decision, the man’s collection was extremely valuable. Back in the 1880s, breeders recognized the distinct medicinal value of cannabis, but they didn’t have the sophisticated tools to tease apart the active compounds. Still, by the 1920s, growers had by virtue of significant trial and error begun to breed plants that might balance paranoia-inducing effects with sedating ones, and marijuana was widely sold on pharmacy shelves by major pharmaceutical companies, as medicine. “People don’t know how respected this was, how many mainstream companies were involved with it, how sophisticated they were,” Wirtshafter says. Then came prohibition, and “the work of millions of our ancestors was lost in a sheet of political extermination. Not only did we try to wipe out the plant, we tried to wipe out all knowledge of the plant.”
When Holmes saw Wirtshafter’s collection, he was ecstatic. There were bottles with pills, powder or gooey black viscous residue mixed with opium. Some were labeled as “aphrodisiacs.” Others claimed to treat anxiety, insomnia, glaucoma. It was one of the best single collections of ancient cannabis DNA he’d ever seen. “Jackpot,” Holmes said.
A Pot Stud Book
Holmes’s lab, Phylos Bioscience, opened in 2014. The lab’s director of research, Jessica Kristof, a horticulturist and biochemist, is tasked with what’s perhaps the most difficult part of Holmes’s endeavor: designing a method to extract DNA from each sample collected. It’s an excruciatingly time-consuming process because each substance requires a different protocol for DNA extraction and purification. Each of Wirtshafter’s samples needed to be handled differently to dissolve whatever substance was in the way of getting the DNA out. “Ancient DNA is very fragmented,” she says. “There’s may be 1 percent of cannabis material in these samples, and they’re already diluted by whatever buffers that have been added to make it medicinal. Then, on top of that, there’s yeast and E.coli and stuff growing on it for years.” With 1,500 strains sequenced, the constellation is slowly taking shape. “What 23andMe does for humans,” says Karassik, “we’re doing for cannabis.”
Mowgli Holmes looks at samples in a laboratory on August 11, 2015. WINSTON ROSS FOR NEWSWEEK
Once complete, Phylos will hand over its data set to the Open Cannabis Project, a nonprofit effort to build an archival record of all cannabis strains, to ensure they stay in the public domain. Then, Holmes says, they will create a testing program that will allow growers and dispensaries to stamp “certified” on the products they sell to consumers, who can then have a better idea of what they’re using and can fine-tune their relationship with different strains. Robert DeSalle, who studies genomics at the American Museum of Natural History, imagines a “stud book” of different strains. “This is going to lend a lot of legitimacy to the industry,” he says. “It’s kind of a black book now.”
Pot is often categorized in two overly simplistic ways, as either an indica or a sativa strain. The indica makes you sleepy, the sativa, hyper. But that nomenclature is based on old information. Back in the ’70s, narrow-leaf sativa strains tended to produce a more euphoric plant, and broad-leaf indica a more sedating one. We still use those terms to describe characteristics of pot, regardless of whether a given strain actually has any indica or sativa lineage. “People talk about strains that are good for sex, or eating food, or playing with your kids,” Holmes says. “Some are good for arthritis.” But because strains are so frequently mislabeled today, it’s nearly impossible to know whether the Sour Diesel that once relieved your migraines is going to be the same Sour Diesel next time you go looking for it. “Very rarely do even the growers know what they’re growing,” Holmes says. Once his DNA map is complete, Holmes believes it will give growers a better way to understand their horticulture and consumers a better way to understand their product.
The scientist is also hoping to solve some intriguing mysteries. We know that much of the pot consumed today in the U.S. has roots in strains smuggled here from Afghanistan and Thailand in the 1960s, but there was cannabis in America before that, before prohibition. Where did that originate, and what can it tell us about ancient migratory patterns of the human race? Cannabis is one of the few plants carried all over the world, over the past 10,000 years. Tracing its genetics could tell us something we didn’t know before about where humans traveled and when.
Heady stuff. And even answering those questions seems like first steps. When he has a more complete picture of cannabis’s genetic makeup, Holmes intends to work with growers to create hundreds of new strains with specific genomic traits. The popular pot strain Blue Dream might have a particular array of terpenes—the compounds that impart flavor and aroma to the plant—directly connected to boosting energy in the user, for example. What if a new strain could be grown that enhances that particular effect? Cannabis is already the most hybridized plant on Earth. But its evolution has only just begun.
Medical marijuana supporters have descended on the state Capitol hoping for long-awaited action that would legalize medical marijuana for more than a dozen conditions.
The state House on Monday afternoon was expected to begin discussing and amending SB 3, which passed overwhelmingly in the Senate nearly a year ago.
The Senate had passed a bill in 2014 but the House allowed it to die.
Supporters rallied on Monday morning, with leaders saying they know they won’t get a “perfect” bill, but expressing optimism the House will pass a bill that will give relief for people including children with severe seizures, veterans with PTSD and people who want an alternative to highly-addictive opioid painkillers.
There are dozens of proposed amendments to SB 3, and wading through them could be a long process on Monday.
A final vote could come no sooner than Tuesday. An amended bill would have to go back to the Senate for another vote.
SB 3 allows medical marijuana to be consumed via routes including oils that can be swallowed or vaporized, but it couldn’t be smoked. One controversial proposed amendment would limit the amount of THC, the chemical that is responsible the marijuana high.
Liberal-leaning Vermont legislature could become the first U.S. state to legalize recreational marijuana use, rather than by voter initiative, in a move that advocates for the drug say could speed its acceptance across the nation.
State representatives this month are set to take up a bill passed by the state Senate in February that would allow adults over 21 to purchase and smoke the drug beginning in 2018.
The move follows a year of hearings in the Senate that lawmakers say allowed them to closely consider appropriate limits to place on the drug’s use. The current proposal would prohibit users from growing plants at home and ban the sale of edible products containing marijuana extracts.
But lawmakers must act before the end of May, when the current session ends, a deadline that may prove difficult to meet. It is uncertain whether it has enough support in the Democratic-controlled House to pass.
The law would impose a 25 percent tax on sales of the drug, which would fund drug law enforcement and drug education programs.
“It makes for a much more thoughtful and measured approach,” said State Senator Jeanette White, a sponsor of the senate bill. “We got to work out the details, we got to ask the questions first and put the whole infrastructure in place before it happens.”
Four states, Colorado, Washington, Oregon and Alaska, as well as the District of Columbia, have legalized marijuana through ballot initiatives, and voters in four more states, including neighboring Massachusetts, are to vote on legalization in November. The drug remains illegal under federal law.
Advocates contend the push for marijuana legalization across the nation will be boosted if the legislation is passed by the Democratic-controlled legislature of Vermont, the home of U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Bills have been submitted in 16 other states, according to advocates, but none have advanced as far.
“It sends an important message that legislatures don’t have to be afraid of this, it’s not a third rail anymore,” said Jeff Laughlin, a 37-year-old software programmer from Barre, who supports the measure.
Laughlin is far from alone. A February poll of 895 state residents by Vermont Public Radio found that 55 percent of Vermonters supported legalization, with 32 percent opposed.
More telling, a 2015 Rand Corp study commissioned by the state found that one in eight residents already use the drug illegally, with one in three people aged 18 to 25 doing so. The report estimated that users spent between $125 million and $225 million on the drug in 2014.
REALITY CHECK
The high prevalence of marijuana use in the state has some lawmakers and even law-enforcement officials contending it’s time for the rules to catch up with reality.
“If it’s one in eight, to me that tells me that we need to change, that society for the most part is accepting it,” said Windham County Sheriff Keith Clark. “If 12 or 13 percent of the population is not being open with law enforcement when we’re out trying to investigate serious crimes, then that is holding us back from working with our communities.”
Supporters acknowledge that the bill will have a harder path to approval in the state’s House of Representatives, where many Republicans are wary of legalizing the drug.
“Many of our members are opposed to this proposal and I don’t know that it can be changed enough for them to change their minds,” said Representative Donald Turner, the House Republican leader. “I don’t feel there is a good argument for legalizing it at this point.”
Governor Peter Shumlin, a Democrat in his final year in office, asked lawmakers to pass the measure during this year’s legislative session, which ends in May.
Debby Haskins, executive director of opposition group Smart Alternatives for Marijuana-Vermont, noted that Vermont, like many U.S. states, is coping with a surge in addiction to opioid drugs, ranging from prescription painkillers to heroin.
She said she believed health officials needed to solve that problem before legalizing a new drug.
“The questions that keep coming up for me is, how will this make Vermont healthier and how will this improve the quality of life? I don’t think this bill does it,” Haskins said. “It’s the wrong direction for us to be heading.”
As the Adilas420 team continues to assist clients with training and Seed to CPA software and assisting in Standard Operating Procedures (SOP’s) we often strive to define “compliance.” Many focus time to ensure the words on their SOP’s reflect procedures compliant with rules and regulations issued by the state, but struggle to implement the protocols required to deliver compliant practices and product.
Compliance is not just about words written in statutes referenced by state inspectors; compliance is about working towards creating a stable industry in a sustainable manner. Compliance applies to your People, your Product and your Process.
Canna-business owner, Laura Davis, describes the recognition of the importance of compliance in her article below.
Compliance: It’s Just Good Business – Cannabis Industry Journal
The cannabis industry in Colorado and other states is heavily regulated at many levels from cultivation to sale. As the industry grows and matures, companies are looking to federal standards and practices that may not immediately apply to their state’s industry, but that have been in place for years to provide for public safety. As the cannabis industry continues to grow, it is critical that industry leaders demonstrate that, through their practices and adherence to public safety standards, their products are safe for the consumer.
This vision has led cannabis companies to seek out compliance experts and build compliance departments. Hiring compliance experts is a major trend in this fledging industry, and more than that, it is a critical element to maintaining employee morale and providing for public safety. Compliance provides a roadmap for employees, offering guidance and resources to assist them with job performance. It is a basic building block for employee retention.
Internally, employees must be aware of what regulations can affect their specific position and job responsibilities. It is crucial that all staff employed by a cannabis business are aware of current and pending regulations. If the employees are well versed on the regulations that impact their duties in the company, there is less of a chance for error.
Externally, cannabis companies should strive for the highest level of compliance, and much can be gleaned from other, more established industries. Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) should be developed to detail critical work flow areas of the business, including cultivation practices, sales protocols, and more.
Compliance can help to create a more sustainable business. In an industry that has grabbed headlines for energy, water and resource usage, compliance is at the core of a sustainable business model.
Detroit medical marijuana caregiver center eligibility map. All of the colored circles identify sections of the map where dispensaries would be in violation of the Detroit zoning laws that took effect March 1. (Gus Burns | fburns@mlive.com)
Detroit has been one of the most lax cities in Michigan regarding the enforcement of medical marijuana dispensaries, which are still illegal under state and federal laws.
With names like The Green Mile, House of Dank, Action Medz and Detroit Grass Station. at latest count there were an estimated 211 dispensaries operating throughout the city, nearly 1.5 per square mile.
There is pending legislation that could define and regulate dispensaries in the state.
The 2008 Michigan Medical Marijuana Act allowed caretakers to designate up to five medical marijuana patients for whom they could provide marijuana. The law did not address the possibility of retail sales.
Some of the pot shops have clearly invested large amount of capital into their entrepreneurial endeavors and buildings, but it could be all for naught with the implementation of strict zoning laws that ban shops throughout most of the city.
One group of dispensary and medical marijuana advocates, Citizens for Sensible Cannabis Reform, is fighting back. It filed a referendum last week that, if approved, could appear on August election ballots and reverse the zoning law that took effect March 1.
The referendum petition is currently being reviewed by the city Elections Department to determine if it is legal and the signatures are valid, says Elections Director Daniel A. Baxter.
As written, shops are banned from operating within 1000 feet of schools, arcades, parks, party stores, child care facilities, churches, public housing and other dispensaries. The city opened a 30-day application window March 1 and says it will begin enforcement next month.
As of Thursday, 113 businesses had applied for permits to become medical marijuana caregiver centers. A cursory look at the locations reveal most violate one or more of the new zoning limitations.
The city offers a mapping tool online for dispensaries to see if their location violates the new zoning limitations. More than 90 percent of the city map is covered with multitude of circles indicating a 1000-foot restricted area for one reason or another.
One applicant, Mind Right, is located at 17243 Mack in west Detroit. Typing in the address reveals numerous zoning location violations. “Location Ineligible,” the city website says. It’s within 1000 feet of “a controlled use location,” Parkie’s Liquor Shoppe; a child daycare facility, Moross Congregational Church and within a Drug Free Zone.
After checking about 10 addresses of applicants, all violated at least on aspect of the ordinance.
The following article from the Boston Globe presents the argument of the opposition; “Opponents argue that the dangers of the drug (marijuana) have been understated, and argue that the state is already facing an opioid abuse crisis.” This crisis is real and serious. Opioid Recovery Specialists like, Matt Flinch, report on studies and confirmation that marijuana can ease opiod withdrawl symptoms.
While we await Federal Regulation, At the end of the day, the American Medical Association shouldn’t deny these simple stats, regarding drug use for medicinal or recreational purposes: alcohol, opiods, prescription and non prescription medications, used medicinally or recreationally kill and marijuana is the better option if possible.
And Congrats to Boston for collecting the signatures from the people to support adult use marijuana regulation and Good Luck on Monday!
Legislative hearing Monday on marijuana legalization initiative – The Boston Globe
State lawmakers are set to hold a hearing Monday on a proposed initiative for the November ballot that would legalize the use of marijuana.
Such a measure has many powerful opponents on Beacon Hill — including Governor Charlie Baker and House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo — but the referendum could move forward even if it doesn’t garner much support from lawmakers at the hearing, which is set for 1 p.m.
Advocates have gathered enough petition signatures to get the measure before the Legislature. The Legislature can approve their initiative, reject it, propose a substitute, or do nothing.
In the absence of legislative approval, organizers will have to gather 10,792 signatures by early July in order to get the measure on the ballot.
The legalization initiative proposes to set a 3.75 percent excise tax on retail marijuana sales, in addition to the state’s 6.25 percent sales tax. The measure would also allow cities and towns to impose an additional 2 percent tax that the municipalities could keep.
The initiative would also allow adults to grow up to six marijuana plants at home. Retail sales could begin in January 2018. A new “Cannabis Control Commission,” would oversee stores, growing facilities, and manufacturers of edible products like brownies.
Some lawmakers have suggested that they may go back and adjust the measure if it is approved by voters, in order to address any shortcomings they might find.
Legalization advocates say laws against marijuana are ineffective, and that the drug should be regulated like alcohol. Voters in four states and Washington, D.C. have approved legalization measures, but marijuana remains illegal at the federal level.
They also say the state has already taken steps to make its marijuana rules more reasonable. Medicinal marijuana is being haltingly implemented in Massachusetts, for instance, and the state has decriminalized personal use.
Governor Baker, Attorney General Maura Healey and Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh argued against legalization in an opinion piece in Monday’s Globe.
“We should not be expanding access to a drug that will further drain our health and safety resources,” the three elected officials said.
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