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Cannabis referendum: All you need to know about what your vote means
NZ Herald 25 April 2020
Family First Comment: “Seeing whānau members who can’t go without cannabis every day for 40-50 years. Seeing 15 year-olds who just want to use cannabis every day. It is insidious, it is damaging, and it is powerful in our communities. This is not the magical cure people often portray it as. Because the underlying reasons for that treatment of Māori, that institutional bias in criminal justice, remains. With the justice system, with the health system – we need to fix those first. Otherwise we just get all the downsides and none of the positive fixes.”

What are the arguments against it?
The main concern from opponents is that legalisation will make cannabis even more accepted and available in this country, and that could lead to an increase in consumption and cannabis-related harm.
The Royal Society of New Zealand reviewed the science on cannabis’ risks and benefits last year, and found there were some negative outcomes from cannabis use (but also big gaps in data and research).
In particular, recreational cannabis was associated with mental illness, especially among youth, drug use disorders, respiratory illness, impaired cognition and increased road accidents.

“People may assume cannabis is largely safe as it has been used by people for so long, but this is not necessarily the case,” said Professor Michelle Glass, Head of the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology at University of Otago.

Opponents of legal cannabis say the North American experience showed it was not the utopia many believed it would be.

In the first US state to legalise, Colorado, more people were being admitted to hospital for cannabis-related problems, and there were more reports of mental health cases linked to marijuana. At the same time, youth consumption had fallen. It also fell in Canada after legalisation 18 months ago, while use had risen among adults in their 60s.

In California and Canada, legalisation had failed to stamp out the black market, partly because of high taxes and bureaucracy which had stifled legal businesses.

Some opponents are sceptical about the touted benefits of legalisation for Māori. Changing the legal status of one drug will do little to shift the entrenched biases in the justice and health systems, they say. In the US, racial divides, including disproportionate arrests of African-Americans for drug possession, have persisted after legalisation.

And despite a promise to keep the cannabis industry small and local, New Zealand had a poor record in caving to big alcohol, tobacco and gambling interests. “I have little confidence in our government being able to handle it,” said Peter Adams, a public health researcher at the University of Auckland.

How does it compare to other countries?
New Zealand would be the fifth country to legalise cannabis, after Uruguay, Georgia, Canada and South Africa. Several US states have also legalised and the state of Australian Capital Territory (ACT) legalised recreational cannabis in January.

‘THIS IS NOT THE MAGICAL CURE’
In his work as a minister, Reverend Hirini Kaa has witnessed the more sinister side of cannabis use.

“Seeing whānau members who can’t go without cannabis every day for 40-50 years,” he said.

“Seeing 15 year-olds who just want to use cannabis every day. It is insidious, it is damaging, and it is powerful in our communities”, he said.

Dr Kaa, who is also a historian and kaiārahi (Māori and Pacific advisor at the University of Auckland, said he supported the increasingly health-based approach to illicit drug use in New Zealand and the shift away from punitive drug laws which disproportionately hurt Māori.

But he will vote “no” to legalising recreational cannabis use in this country, he said.

“This is not the magical cure people often portray it as. Because the underlying reasons for that treatment of Māori, that institutional bias in criminal justice, remains.

“With the justice system, with the health system – we need to fix those first. Otherwise we just get all the downsides and none of the positive fixes.”

He cited the example of the United States, where legalisation in some states had not changed the fortunes of African-Americans or indigenous people. They were still far more likely to be arrested and convicted of drug possession offences, and had not been at the heart of the “Green Rush”.

Dr Kaa said he believed he was in the minority In his iwi, most of whom backed reform. Cannabis had “found its way into our culture” through Bob Marley and reggae, he said. It played a role in its illegal economy. And if it were legalised, Māori stood to benefit from the economic opportunities it created in hard-up regions like the East Cape and the Far North.

But when it came to big social policy changes, New Zealand did not look back, he said.

“We don’t question the impact. Look at the alcohol laws. Anyone look back and see the impact on Māori? No. We do this, clap ourselves on the back for being progressive, and then Māori will have to clean up the mess in our communities.

“I hope people who are going to treat this as some kind of great, progressive leap forward understand the impact that it’s actually going to have in certain communities that New Zealand doesn’t even want to hear from, and doesn’t look back on.”
READ MORE: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12327184 (behind paywall)

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I’m a mom. I’m sick of this in-your-face cannabis culture
Los Angeles Times 17 April 2020
Family First Comment: “once your kid has a problem with drugs, the ubiquity of pots shops and how cool they look and their pervasive promotion across the city can feel disturbing. It’s as if the schools and public health professionals and parents are giving kids one message and the billboards that litter the city are giving them another. Which seems cooler to a 16-year-old? Earnest mom talks or rainbow billboards? When I was a kid, I know which one I would have chosen.”
#saynopetodope
VoteNO.nz

Our daughter got into college on the East Coast and packed up her winter clothes and some hard-won life lessons and is thriving now. But her story could easily have gone in a different direction. I don’t know if pot is a “gateway drug,” but you don’t have to watch the film “Beautiful Boy” biting back tears to know that from a little problem can grow life-changing trouble before you, the parent, even know the seed has been planted.

A few months ago, our 16-year-old was found with a vape pen. I was furious. I was so furious I stayed quiet the entire 30-minute ride home from his high school. He sat next to me in the passenger seat. “Mom, I’m sorry,” he said. “It was a stupid thing to do.” I looked at him and said, “I don’t want to say anything I will regret, so I am not going to talk right now.” I had a pit in my stomach thinking, “Not this again.”

As we got into our neighborhood, we drove by a billboard that featured a woman with pink and yellow rainbow hair and silver eyebrows, with a large, bubble-lettered sign that read “Kushy Punch.”

If I was 16 and everybody was vaping strawberry nicotine or Red Sundae cannabis or whatever Kushy Punch is, I’m sure I’d want to do it too. I grew up in the 1980s and we smoked pot in high school. I got it mostly from friends and my parents didn’t pay much attention — it was the ’80s. But the marijuana wasn’t particularly potent. We didn’t smoke it through USB ports. It wasn’t promoted on every corner or by every social media influencer (we didn’t have social media or influencers back then). It was a simpler time. But maybe every generation thinks that.

I didn’t want to ruin Amy’s cannabis shopping spree. And I don’t think dispensaries are the root of the teen weed issue. But once your kid has a problem with drugs, the ubiquity of pots shops and how cool they look and their pervasive promotion across the city can feel disturbing. It’s as if the schools and public health professionals and parents are giving kids one message and the billboards that litter the city are giving them another. Which seems cooler to a 16-year-old? Earnest mom talks or rainbow billboards? When I was a kid, I know which one I would have chosen.
READ MORE: https://www.latimes.com/lifestyle/story/2020-04-17/4-20-marijuana-cannabis-culture

Colorado mum Jo worked in youth drug prevention educating young people about the risk behaviours, and also worked in drug testing.
Jo has a warning for New Zealand parents based on her own harrowing experience of marijuana within her family, and also the effect of legalisation of recreational marijuana in her home state of Colorado.
Read more: www.saynopetodope.nz

Daily Mail 12 April 2020
Family First Comment: Even the experts are changing their minds after seeing the evidence..
“Previously the expert – a professor at the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London – had supported tightly controlled legalisation married with public education campaigns spelling out the risks, but growing evidence about the harm cannabis causes had made him change his mind about legalising the Class B drug. He said the experience of places that had decriminalised or legalised it – from Portugal and the Netherlands to swathes of North America – had made him think again.”
#saynopetodope

 Legalising cannabis would result in soaring numbers of people suffering from schizophrenia-like psychosis, one of Britain’s top psychiatrists has warned.

Evidence now shows that when the drug is legalised, greater numbers smoke it more frequently and in stronger varieties.

These factors increase the incidence of cannabis-related psychosis, according to Professor Sir Robin Murray, an authority on the risks of the drug to mental health.

He predicted that ‘big cannabis’ firms with scant regard for people’s health will ‘seduce’ the Government into reforming the law – and the State will then find itself in thrall to the new industry because of the tax and jobs it provides.

The warning is a major intervention from Professor Murray, who told The Mail on Sunday growing evidence about the harm cannabis causes had made him change his mind about legalising the Class B drug.

Previously the expert – a professor at the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London – had supported tightly controlled legalisation married with public education campaigns spelling out the risks.
READ MORE: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8211293/Legalising-cannabis-result-people-suffering-psychosis.html

Insider 8 April 2020
Family First Comment: Yet another health hazard of smoking dope
“Lung health experts warn that smoking marijuana regularly could increase a person’s risk of contracting COVID-19, and also having more severe symptoms and complications from the disease, given evidence on tobacco and COVID-19, and what we already know about how heavy marijuana-smoking can impact the lungs.”
#saynopetodope

In the days and weeks leading up to stay-in-place orders and lockdowns, legal cannabis sales spiked.

Some studies and anecdotal reports suggest marijuana can help people cope with anxiety, which is being felt deeply across the world as the coronavirus pandemic continues.

But lung health experts warn that smoking marijuana regularly could increase a person’s risk of contracting COVID-19, and also having more severe symptoms and complications from the disease, given evidence on tobacco and COVID-19, and what we already know about how heavy marijuana-smoking can impact the lungs.

Most hospitalized coronavirus patients have underlying lung disease
Although there’s no data on marijuana use and COVID-19 patients, marijuana smokers — particularly ones who combine cannabis with tobacco — should be wary of their habits because of existing data on coronavirus patients in Italy and China, according to Dr. Barry J. Make, a pulmonologist at National Jewish Health.

“From China and Italy, we see people who developed COVID-19 and had underlying lung disease, [they] have more complications and die more often,” Make said. “So this is the perfect time to stop smoking.”

Preliminary CDC data found that chronic lung diseases including asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or COPD, and emphysema, were common underlying conditions in hospitalized patients in the US.

The CDC was able to analyze 7,162 laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 cases and found that 656 of them, or 9.2%, reported having a chronic lung condition.
READ MORE: https://www.insider.com/regular-cannabis-smoking-may-increase-covid-19-risk-lung-experts-2020-4

The Guardian 5 April 2020
Family First Comment: An accurate assessment – and a warning for NZ:
* Growers have gone bust, and the black market is still thriving.
* Statistics Canada, a state agency, reports that just 29% of cannabis users buy all of their product from a legal source.
* price was almost double that of illegal market. C$5.59 to C$10.23 per gram. That was caused by tax burdens & overheads: legal market has to comply with regulations on fungicide & pesticide residue levels, & draconian security requirements for grow sites
* “Why would anyone drive a few miles up the road to score bad weed from many of the government shops when your regular black-market dealer lives nearby, has better product and brings it to your door for half the price?”

Canada had permitted cannabis for medical use since 2001. Medical patients were allowed to grow four plants, and licensed producers cultivated larger crops for sale online to those with valid prescriptions. But most Canadian cities had illegal – but tolerated – dispensaries where the drug was sold completely indiscriminately. These stores made Amsterdam’s coffee shops look as prim as a WI cake stand. The quality and variety of cannabis on sale at these illegal outlets was outstanding, bewildering. Business was not just booming, but blazing.And it was all completely illegal.

Canada’s Cannabis Act of 2018 was a bold attempt to impose some order on this anarchic retail scene. It legalised the sale to adults of 30g of cannabis in austere packaging from government-licensed shops. Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau said: “The old approach to cannabis didn’t work. It was too easy for our kids to get it and gangs and drug dealers were reaping the profits. That changes from now on.”

Bill Blair, a former Toronto police chief, became an unlikely cheerleader for legalisation, arguing that to do so would “keep cannabis out of the hands of youth, and profits out of the hands of criminals”. Two other key goals of regulation were the protection of public health and the reduction in criminality associated with the illegal market. After 50 years of the unending, senseless drug war, peace had broken out.

Or so it seemed. Because while Canada may have lit the fuse on an ambitious experiment, every high has a low. Within a year the industry was experiencing mass layoffs, multi-billion-dollar stock-market losses, executive firings and corporate scandals as the overhyped new sector experienced a dramatic and humbling public correction.

What went wrong? Alastair Moore, co-founder of Hanway Associates, a London-based cannabis consultancy, says the Canadian industry has been driven by vulture capitalism and wishful thinking. “A mix of greed and naivety led this industry to great heights – and has left it on its knees. While some made lots of money, others lost their investments and now many others have lost their jobs.”

According to Moore’s fellow founder, George McBride: “The key thing is that Canada did actually get the reforms through. In and of itself, that is a huge feat. It’s the first time any major developed country has done so. And so, kudos. However, getting it through has involved a lot of politicians who didn’t understand what they’re talking about designing a really complicated system.”

So just how does a state create and regulate an entirely new business of intoxication that has always existed, essentially, in a countercultural, outlaw space? Canada, it turns out, did so cautiously, with every decision deliberated over by a centralised government Task Force.

Added to the complexity of the policy and its implementation, the needle of international capital’s wonky moral compass swung straight at these lucrative new markets. Hundreds of millions of dollars were raised on global capital markets and the Canadian landscape was quickly dotted with massive new grow sites.

The so-called “green rush” had started and production went into overdrive. Stock prices soared and fortunes were staked, made, doubled and tripled in an atmosphere reminiscent of the 90s dotcom boom, or the Yukon gold rush of the 19th century, when 100,000 prospectors headed into the Canadian hinterlands in search of riches. Many firms hoped to corner the Canadian market by throwing millions of dollars of shareholders’ money into massive grow sites. This time, the gold was green. But soon, things started to fall apart.

The main problem Canada’s smokers and growers faced was access: too few retail shops were able to open to serve the eager new market. Canada is a country of 38 million people, divided into 10 provinces that are similar to US states, with provincial governments producing a patchwork of varying regulations. Over a third – 13.5 million – of all Canadians live in the state of Ontario. But as of 2 March this year, Ontario had just 41 retail cannabis stores. The province of Alberta, home to 4.4 million, has 423 stores.

And where there was product available, the price was almost double that of the illegal market. C$5.59 to C$10.23 per gram (or over £40 a quarter ounce). That was caused by tax burdens and overheads: the legal market has to comply with regulations on fungicide and pesticide residue levels, and draconian security requirements for grow sites, such as huge vaults in which to store the cannabis and record-keeping for every person who enters these vaults.

The illegal market, meanwhile, is completely unregulated – and thriving because of this. Statistics Canada, a state agency, reports that just 29% of cannabis users buy all of their product from a legal source. Four in 10 Canadians told the organisation that they bought at least some cannabis from illegal sources in 2019.

The next problem was that many stores sold poor-quality grass, with smokers complaining that it had been poorly dried and cured, and tasted bad. Modern cannabis users are accustomed to a range of flavours, from lemon to mango, pineapple, strawberry and pine. These flavours are derived from the plant’s natural aroma profile, which skilled growers preserve by careful breeding, correct harvesting and slow, cautious curing of the fragrant flowers.

Many players in the new mass market often skipped these steps in the pursuit of profit, says David Brown, a British Columbia-based cannabis industry analyst. “Many consumers have had complaints about high prices and what is perceived as lower quality, especially the tendency of many of the legal dried flower products to be overly dried, often from a rushed or improper curing and drying process.”

Why would anyone drive a few miles up the road to score bad weed from many of the government shops when your regular black-market dealer lives nearby, has better product and brings it to your door for half the price?

It’s worth reflecting, also, on the psychology of some of these users. “For a long time, cannabis has been the mark of the rebel, the outsider, the outlaw,” says Brown. “A lot of the people who complain about ‘bad weed’ and so-called ‘fake legalisation’ are doing so because parts of their countercultural identity have been altered forever by this law change. Canada has made cannabis boring – and that was kind of the point.”

With few shops to sell to and customers clinging to their traditional dealers, the new cannabis corporations found themselves holding a glut of product. There is a stockpile of grass weighing in at 400 tonnes, at last count, according to official government inventory figures.

The rollout of retail shops was left, in many cases, to inexperienced officials in provincial government departments, says McBride. “Ontario authorities said, ‘We don’t trust private organisations to run cannabis shops. We’re going to do it all ourselves.’ Then they tried to do it, but they squandered about $80 million trying to figure out how to do it, and got absolutely nowhere. They had to cancel it and invite private tenders. All these big, shiny grow facilities that cost C$10m, C$20m or C$30m to build, and which all grew loads of cannabis – there was nowhere to sell it, because there weren’t any shops,” he says.

In a stinging irony, medical patients – the very people whose decades of activism had driven the wider reforms, faced cannabis shortages and a steep increase in price after legalisation as suppliers diverted their medical product in bulk to the new recreational market rather than in hundreds of smaller deals to medical patients.
READ MORE: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/apr/05/stoners-cheered-when-canada-legalised-cannabis-how-did-it-all-go-wrong

EurekaAlert 2 April 2020
Family First Comment: Female eggs exposed to THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, have an impaired ability to produce viable embryos, and are significantly less likely to result in a viable pregnancy

Female eggs exposed to THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, have an impaired ability to produce viable embryos, and are significantly less likely to result in a viable pregnancy, according to an animal study accepted for presentation at ENDO 2020, the Endocrine Society’s annual meeting. The abstract will be published in the Journal of the Endocrine Society.

Marijuana, or cannabis, is the most commonly used recreational drug by people of reproductive age. The rise in marijuana use has occurred at the same time that THC percentages in the drug have increased. “Currently, patients seeking infertility treatments are advised against cannabis use, but the scientific evidence backing this statement is weak,” said Master student Megan Misner, part of the research laboratory led by Laura Favetta, Ph.D., in the Department of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Guelph in Canada. “This makes it difficult for physicians to properly advise patients undergoing in vitro fertilization.”

In the new study, researchers treated cow oocytes, or female eggs, with concentrations of THC equivalent to therapeutic and recreational doses. The oocytes were collected and matured into five groups: untreated, control, low THC, mid THC and high THC.

The eggs’ developmental rates and gene expression were measured. The researchers evaluated the ability of embryos to reach critical stages of development at specific time points. With higher concentrations of THC, they found a significant decrease and delay in the ability of the treated oocytes to reach these checkpoints. “This is a key indicator in determining the quality and developmental potential of the egg,” Misner said.

THC exposure led to a significant decrease in the expression of genes called connexins, which are present at increased levels in higher quality oocytes. Poorer quality oocytes, with lower connexin expression levels, have been shown to lead to a poorer embryo development. “This embryo would be less likely to proceed past the first week of development, and thus lead to infertility,” Misner said.
READ MORE: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-04/tes-ssm040220.php

Technology Networks 31 March 2020
Family First Comment: Good news – especially if NZ makes foolish decision to legalise dope.

“Scientists now report that they are one step closer to a convenient saliva test for measuring cannabis levels at roadside stops. “People have the perception that driving after smoking marijuana is safer than driving drunk, but both substances can have similar effects, such as slowed reaction time, diminished alertness and reduced self-awareness. This is an emerging field, but preliminary clinical reports suggest that anywhere above 1 to 15 nanograms of THC per milliliter of blood is considered a level of impairment.””

In the U.S., those who consume alcohol and drive are often subjected to roadside stops, breathalyzer tests and stiff penalties if their blood alcohol content exceeds certain limits. Currently, no such test exists for cannabis intoxication, although the substance is known to impair driving, among other activities. Scientists now report that they are one step closer to a convenient saliva test for measuring cannabis levels at roadside stops.

The researchers are presenting their results through the American Chemical Society (ACS) SciMeetings online platform.

A brand-new video on the research is available at www.acs.org/philly-2020-thc.

“People have the perception that driving after smoking marijuana is safer than driving drunk, but both substances can have similar effects, such as slowed reaction time, diminished alertness and reduced self-awareness,” says Shalini Prasad, Ph.D., who led the study. However, unlike alcohol, the blood level of the psychoactive compound in marijuana, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), that constitutes impairment has not been well characterized. “This is an emerging field, but preliminary clinical reports suggest that anywhere above 1 to 15 nanograms of THC per milliliter of blood is considered a level of impairment,” Prasad says.

As more U.S. states decriminalize marijuana, law enforcement agencies are grappling with how to keep the roads safe from drivers who are high. Blood tests for THC, while accurate, are time-consuming and invasive, and many police officers lack the skills to perform such tests at roadside stops. Some researchers are working on devices that measure THC levels in breath (similar to a breathalyzer for alcohol), but according to Prasad, levels of the substance are low in breath, requiring extensive, error-prone data processing to filter out effects of other compounds. Because THC in saliva correlates closely with that in blood, Prasad and colleagues wanted to develop a simple, quick and accurate saliva test for the compound.

To do so, the researchers, who are at the University of Texas at Dallas, engineered THC sensor strips and an electronic reader. The sensor strips, which contained two electrodes, were coated with an antibody that binds THC so that the substance could be isolated from the many other compounds in saliva. “We used the antibody so that we could really only look at the needle in the haystack,” Prasad says. To perform the test, the researchers added a tiny drop of human saliva spiked with THC to the strip and inserted it into the electronic reader, which applied a specific voltage. When THC attached to the antibody, the electrical current changed because of polarization that occurred between the interacting antibody and THC surfaces. The e-reader converted these data into THC concentration.
READ MORE: https://www.technologynetworks.com/applied-sciences/news/step-closer-to-roadside-cannabis-testing-332741

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NewsHub 31 March 2020
Family First Comment: The health risks were already there before the coronavirus! Users are now just more at risk. Time to go DrugFree – for health’s sake.

Stoners are being told to ease up on the weed over the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic, with scientists saying the health risks are significant.

Dr Marta Rychert, a senior research officer at Massey University’s SHORE and Whariki Research Centre says around five percent of New Zealand’s population uses cannabis as medication.

“People who self-medicate with cannabis are the most vulnerable in the terms of COVID-19,” she said in a statement on Tuesday.

“They are older than recreational users and often suffer from multiple health problems.”

A recent survey by SHORE showed the most popular way to use marijuana was to smoke it.

“Smoking presents unique risks in the context of COVID-19 due to the impacts on lung function.”

People who self medicate using oils or tinctures will not suffer the same ill effects.
READ MORE: https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2020/03/cannabis-users-encouraged-to-take-a-break-over-lockdown-period-due-to-covid-19-health-risks.html

TVNZ One News 31 March 2020
Family First Comment: And if we legalise cannabis and put out the welcome mat to the marijuana vaping market, we’ll be in big trouble!
Teenagers are being attracted to products such as vaping and dabbing high THC products.
#addiction #healthharms #saynopetodope

A new study shows about a third of Kiwi high school students have tried vaping, but two thirds of those had never smoked tobacco.