NewsHub 6 May 2021
Labour and National have quashed Green MP Chlöe Swarbrick’s push to grant amnesty for ‘green fairies’, those who illegally supply cannabis to people with health issues.

Swarbrick wrote to Health Minister Andrew Little advocating on behalf of TV presenter Katy Thomas, whose severely epileptic 6-year old son’s legal medicinal cannabis was confiscated and destroyed at the border because the CBD level was a fraction too high.

Swarbrick also asked Little to consider an amnesty for ‘green fairies’ who risk a prison sentence to provide relief to their communities. A Waikato man giving cannabis free to elderly people for pain relief was recently raided and charged by police.

But Little confirmed he has no plans to grant amnesty to green fairies, despite the unaffordability of legal products. National Party justice spokesperson Simon Bridges also poured cold water on the prospect.

“Conservative groups, the likes of Family First, decided to start painting it as ‘grow your own’ and that’s exactly why we’ve ended up with this highly pharmaceutical approach, with huge cost barriers to patients getting access to this medicine, because we’re treating it in the same way we treat things like morphine.”

Family First supported National Party deputy leader Dr Shane Reti’s unsuccessful medicinal cannabis Bill in 2018 that would have facilitated pharmacist dispensing but would have excluded loose leaf cannabis.

Family First’s Bob McCoskrie told Newshub he found it ironic the Greens voted against Dr Reti’s Bill which “would have sped up the process and increased the availability of product”.

“We don’t allow chemists to distribute illegal drugs willy-nilly.”

Swarbrick responded: “You only have to look at Family First’s anti-science, moral high-horsing history of telling people how to live their lives – what they can do with their bodies and who they’re allowed to love – to understand where these views come from.”
READ MORE: https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2021/05/cannabis-labour-national-quash-green-mp-chl-e-swarbrick-s-hope-for-green-fairy-amnesty.html

The Irish Sun 4 May 2021
CANNABIS-related admissions to psychiatric hospitals here have increased by 250 per cent since 2007 – as experts warn that the drug “represents the gravest threat to young Irish people’s mental health today”.

The College of Psychiatrists of Ireland (CPsychI) believe that the combination of increasingly potent strains and a perception that the drug is generally harmless, have had devastating effects.

There are an estimated 45,000 young adults – 15 to 34yrs – in Ireland who meet criteria for cannabis dependence.

In 2019, cannabis was the main substance for 71 per cent of those under 18s attending addiction treatment in Ireland.

CANNABIS CORRELATION

Child addiction specialist Dr Gerry McCarney said he is concerned that the strength of the drug has reached a point where it’s causing young people to become more paranoid, more quickly.

The consultant child and adolescent addiction psychiatrist said: “We are seeing an increasing rate of difficulty coping by young people who are using a lot of cannabis.

“This can result in frequent presentations with low mood, suicidal ideation, increasing self-harm, anxiety disorders, clinical depression, and for a smaller number increasing paranoia and quite significant psychotic symptoms.”
READ MORE: https://www.thesun.ie/news/6939424/cannabis-admissions-psychiatric-hospitals-increase/

A report published last year Decriminalising Drugs: The Truth About Portugal was written on behalf of the Swedish Drug Policy Centre about Portugal’s decriminalisation of drugs.

Reference is often made by New Zealand drug advocates to Portugal as an example of a country with a ‘successful’ drugs policy, attributed to the decriminalisation policy it carried out in 2001.

The report makes it clear that Portugal’s 2001 reforms were more far-reaching than just the abolition of penalties for using and possessing small quantities of drugs. Above all, they included major efforts including resources for primary prevention, funding for civil society projects, social housing, rehabilitation and substitution therapy.

The care efforts in Portugal draw on prompt action and good coordination between the various health services. Someone dependent on drugs and arrested by the police will appear before a CDT (Commission for the Dissuasion of Drug Abuse) within three days and will often have an initial appointment with an addiction specialist within a week.

This is a good example of the ‘coercion of the law’. It’s both a health and a criminal issue.

But contrary to what you may have been told, use of cannabis – especially among young people – has increased since decriminalisation. The percentage of 15-16-year-olds who have used cannabis in the last 30 days is four times higher in Portugal than in Sweden. The number of hospital admissions for cannabis-related psychosis increased almost 30 times between 2000 and 2015. Researchers have found no fall in drug-related violence since the decriminalisation in 2001. The latest figures on drug-related mortality show that Portugal is now back at almost the same level as before decriminalisation.

There is also a concern that decriminalisation risks sending signals that promote increased use. Studies suggest that cannabis use has increased among the adult population.

The head of the Portuguese drug agency, SICAD, João Goulão, says that, “Decriminalisation is not a miracle cure. If that’s all you do, things will get worse.”

As the media push the decriminalisation narrative, we hope that you will be able to take the time to read this important report.

READ THE FULL REPORT

The Denver Post 28 April 2021
Lafonna Pacheco hardly recognized her daughter, Roxanne Delte, by the time she turned 17.

“It wasn’t just a teenager thing,” Pacheco said. “It was beyond that. She was paranoid, she was oppositional. Something mentally was going on and it was scary because I couldn’t put my finger on it.”

After five stints in rehab, Delte is able to say clearly what was going on: She was consuming too much high-potency cannabis — flower, yes, but also concentrated wax and other products, too — and that was ruining her life. She recalls regularly puking, and how uncomfortably high she would get from the wax in particular.

“I lost glimpses of time,” said Delte, who has not used cannabis for a year. “It completely changed my mental state and my routine.”

“Her friends thought she was smoking something else,” added Pacheco, who lives in Colorado Springs. “She wasn’t on crack, not on meth. The way these marijuana products affected her in her mind and her actions was complete psychosis.”

Such extreme cases are showing up more among Colorado youth, parents and school health professionals say. And people like Pacheco are increasingly pleading with lawmakers to cut off teens’ easy access to cannabis products, as well as asking for more regulation of products like edibles, wax and shatter that contain THC levels that can be dangerous for developing brains.

Their champion in the Colorado Legislature is Rep. Yadira Caraveo, a pediatrician who has for months been negotiating legislation to limit THC potency. She’s unlikely to succeed in installing any THC caps this year, but said she’s “pretty certain” she’ll introduce a bill with other provisions to more strictly regulate cannabis sales for medical and recreational buyers, with a focus on limiting youth access.

Growing evidence shows high-potency THC products are more likely to bring on or worsen mental health issues in young people. The state’s own reporting says so, and a broader study of 204,000 people ages 10-24 released in January in the Journal of the American Medical Association’s pediatrics publication found elevated risk of self-harm among young people who misused cannabis.

“We found SUBSTANTIAL evidence that THC intoxication can cause acute psychotic symptoms, which are worse with higher doses,” the 2020 report from Colorado’s health department said.

But the overall body of research on this topic is limited, and the state’s report also recommended further studies on THC’s effects on kids.
READ MORE: https://www.denverpost.com/2021/04/28/cannabis-marijuana-thc-potency-colorado-legislature/

New Atlas 25 April 2021
A new study from researchers at Syracuse University is presenting results from one of the first placebo-controlled trials exploring the influence of CBD on sensations of acute pain. The mixed results suggest CBD may reduce feelings of unpleasantness, helping one tolerate pain more effectively despite not actually lowering the intensity of pain.

Cannabidiol, commonly known as CBD, is one of the most prominent active compounds in cannabis. Unlike THC, which is primarily responsible for the plant’s more psychoactive effects, CBD is non-intoxicating.

Over the last few years CBD has been touted as a treatment for everything from insomnia to cancer. The vast majority of the claims surrounding CBD’s medicinal uses are unproven and scientists are quickly trying to catch up and figure out what conditions this compound actually helps.

It is commonly suggested CBD is an effective and safe analgesic, but there is a distinct lack of robust clinical evidence backing up those anecdotal claims. A new study, led by researchers from Syracuse University, is offering one of the first placebo-controlled investigations into CBD’s effects on pain.

Instead of focusing on chronic pain sufferers, the new research was more interested in how CBD influences responses to acute pain, and how strong CBD’s placebo effect is in this context. Fifteen subjects were recruited for the study, and each subject completed four experimental sessions.
READ MORE: https://newatlas.com/health-wellbeing/placebo-cbd-pain-trial-results-syracuse/

NBC News 23 April 2021
As more states legalize adult use of recreational marijuana, researchers are trying to determine the drug’s impact on developing brains.

Women who use marijuana during pregnancy are putting their babies at risk, a study published Thursday finds.

Babies born to women who were heavy cannabis users during pregnancy are more likely to have health problems, including premature birth and death within a year of birth, compared to babies born to women who did not use cannabis during pregnancy, according to an analysis of nearly 5 million California women who gave birth between 2001 and 2012.

The report in the journal Addiction is more evidence of the risks of marijuana use during pregnancy. As more states legalize adult use of recreational marijuana, researchers have been trying to determine whether the drug might have deleterious effects on fetuses. A study published in August linked pot use among pregnant women with an elevated risk of autism in their babies.

“Because many states in the U.S. now have approved medical and/or recreational cannabis, we recommend regulatory approaches targeting pregnant women, such as developing guidelines for physicians to appropriately recommend medical cannabis and communicating potential risks of prenatal cannabis use,” said the study’s lead author, Yuyan Shi, an associate professor of health policy and health economics at the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science at the University of California, San Diego.

Another approach would be to require dispensaries to display warning signs and for cannabis products to include warning labels of potential dangers to fetuses, she said in an email.

It’s not known how many pregnant women are using marijuana, nor how many might be heavy users. Earlier research showed that the number of pregnant women using cannabis doubled between 2002 and 2016, from 3.4 percent to 7 percent. That’s probably an underestimate, the researchers noted.
READ MORE: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/womens-health/heavy-marijuana-use-during-pregnancy-linked-premature-birth-early-infant-n1264993?cid=sm_npd_nn_fb_ma

Transform Drug Policy Foundation 3 March 2021
What does this new cocaine regulation Bill propose?

The proposed Bill was based on Transform’s three-tier regulation framework to regulate stimulants. The main idea is to have three types of regulatory levels depending on the risks of the products:

• The first set of regulations would cover low potency or non-psychoactive products such as the coca leaf itself, as well as beverages, food and cosmetic products based on the coca leaf. These products would be subject to lighter regulation, similar to those already in place for similar products such as coffee, with private actors allowed to buy and sell these products more freely.

• The second type of regulation would cover psychoactive products derived from the coca leaf that are used for recreational purposes, such as cocaine. Under this type or regulation, consumers would have to go through a medical check-up and register in a database before being allowed to buy a certain dose of cocaine in registered pharmacies. All types of advertisements and sponsoring would be forbidden and only adults would be allowed to purchase cocaine.

• The third type of regulation would cover psychoactive products derived from the coca leaf that, due to their health consequences, would remain prohibited for sale, such as crack cocaine. However, use would not be criminalised and a harm reduction strategy adopted, ensuring that all problematic consumers can receive adequate social and medical treatment.

The harvest of coca plants and the production of cocaine would also be subject to a strict regulation. Coca plantations would be authorized only in the areas where coca is currently being grown, as long as they remain outside of the environmentally protected areas. This is to ensure that the regulation of this market benefits the areas and communities most affected by the war on drugs and prevent new actors with potential advantages from entering the market. In addition, only local farmers and Indingeous communities would be allowed to grow coca plants and would benefit from the technical and financial assistance of the State. The harvest would then be bought by the State who would sub-contract the transformation of the coca leaf into cocaine to research centers and pharmaceuticals.
READ MORE: https://transformdrugs.org/blog/interview-with-lorenzo-uribe-lead-writer-of-the-colombian-cocaine-regulation-bill

Chicago Tribune 15 April 2021
Three times the number of African Americans were arrested for marijuana-related offenses in Chicago than other ethnicities combined in 2020, according to Chicago Police Department arrest totals retrieved under a Freedom of Information Act request.

TVNZ One News 13 April 2021
Health Minister Andrew Little has shot down calls for a swift overhaul of drug laws, saying any major change would first have to go back to a referendum.

National Families In Action, April 2021
Robert Corry, a lawyer who helped write Colorado’s Amendment 64, which legalized marijuana for recreational use in the state in 2012, has issued a searing indictment of how legal pot has turned out. His efforts to legalize were built on the notion that marijuana is safer than alcohol, but he writes in Sunday’s Gazette, “The outcome of 64 is shameful, hurts people, and Colorado is not ‘safer’.”

While he still supports legalization, he laments the way it has turned out: “a commercialized, for-profit, elitist, government-protected, privileged, monopolistic industry that perpetuates itself and its obscene profits, to the detriment of the public good and the planet earth.” Given that one of the three goals that motivated his advocacy, he says, was to “create a free-enterprise system, taxed and regulated similar to alcohol for commercial sales,” one must ask why is he surprised?

He says the “pot lobby threw a temper tantrum” against proposed legislation to cap THC levels in commercial pot and scoffs at Colorado’s governor and Denver’s mayor for declaring marijuana businesses “essential” while schools, churches, and gyms were shut down during the pandemic.

He takes down the practice of indoor growing, which he says is done for the sole purpose of genetically altering the plants to produce supercharged THC levels. Indoor growing also brings environmental pests that require powerful chemicals, pesticides, and herbicides, whose “toxic carcinogens are ingested by the consumer or run off directly into Colorado’s scarce water.”

He repeatedly notes that the law he helped write violates federal law, and now sees it as a way to end commercialization because “licensees have made a deal with their devil; in exchange for the license, they consent to future search of their premises or documents, without a warrant, by any government officer, including federal.”

He says the restrictions Congress has placed on using federal funds to enforce federal law in legalization states apply only to medical, not recreational marijuana businesses. So federal officials could investigate recreational businesses and subpoena the banks who do businesses with them and newspapers they advertise in because they are “aiding and abetting” criminal activity.

He warns that the house the recreational business is built on is made of “sand and in need of serious renovations.”

Read Robert Corey’s Gazette op-ed here.