Coming to the Mile High City this weekend (4/20/14) was the perfect 65th birthday present for Karen Stevenson. She and her husband drove out of the Bible Belt to experience, for the first time, what it's like to buy and smoke weed legally. She wore a T-shirt featuring an image of MarÃa Sabina, a late Mexican shaman, puffing on a joint, a shirt that, until this day, she never dared to wear outside her Cape Girardeau, Missouri, home. "It's kind of like being a part of history," she said Saturday, while waiting for a bus in front of a marijuana themed sandwich shop. "I used to want to go to Amsterdam. Now I don't have to." The Stevensons are among the tens of thousands of visitors, by some estimates 80,000, who've come to Denver to mark 420 (April 20), a date that's emerged as a holiday among those steeped in cannabis culture. This is a weekend that draws people of various backgrounds and with different needs and desires. - CNN
WASHINGTON (AP) – The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday that it does not support the use of marijuana for medical purposes. The FDA said in a statement that it and other agencies with the Health and Human Services Department had "concluded that no sound scientific studies supported medical use of marijuana for treatment in the United States, and no animal or human data supported the safety or efficacy of marijuana for general medical use." A number of states have passed legislation allowing marijuana use for medical purposes, but the FDA said, "These measures are inconsistent with efforts to ensure that medications undergo the rigorous scientific scrutiny of the FDA approval process and are proven safe and effective." The statement contradicts a 1999 finding from the Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academy of Sciences, which reported that "marijuana's active components are potentially effective in treating pain, nausea, the anorexia of AIDS wasting and other symptoms, and should be tested rigorously in clinical trials." Bruce Mirken, director of communications for the Marijuana Policy Project, said Thursday, "If anybody needed proof that the FDA has become totally politicized, this is it. This isn't a scientific statement, it's a political statement." - USA Today
Last week, Fox News shared a piece suggesting that a jump in admissions at colleges across Colorado may be related to the passage of Amendment 64, which legalized retail pot sales. Of course, eighteen year old college freshmen couldn't take advantage of this law anyhow, since it only pertains to adults ages 21 and over. But even if this fact isn't widely understood, one University of Colorado official has a very different explanation for his school's admissions application jump, and it has nothing to do with weed. Instead, CU admissions director Kevin MacLennan believes the main reason for the rise is CU's new affiliation with CommonApp.org, the online home of the Common Application, which allows students to apply to multiple member schools using the same form. - Denver Westword
Jody Stonebraker, 54, shuttle bus driver for the 4/20 events in Denver this year, said she's met people this weekend from all over the country, even the world, including Germany, Japan and Mexico. She can't stop singing the praises of her cannabis loving passengers. "It's been so fun, and I'm getting paid for this," she said. "I tended bar for 16 years, and they were all jerks. Every other person, you wanted to shoot. You guys are awesome!" For those afraid to speak out themselves, she said, what happens in Denver "gives them a voice." - CNN
Some call the Stanleys drug dealers. Others accuse Jesse of doing "Satan's work," even though a unique form of medical marijuana he developed, an oil called Charlotte's Web, has brought relief to over a hundred families with epileptic children. At a time when a majority of Americans favor legalization and pot is shaking off its 1960s era hippie dippy image to emerge into the mainstream of American life, Jesse encourages evangelicals to stop demonizing a drug that he says is far safer than alcohol, a substance that increasing numbers of his Christian friends consume. "Satan didn't create this plant," says Jesse. "Satan doesn't create anything. This is God's plant. And God is moving in the hearts of men and women and children around the world about this plant in ways that I never would've imagined five years ago."Paige Figi began telling everyone she knew about the oil, now called Charlotte's Web. Converts include CNN medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta. After filming a program called "Weed" about the Stanleys and Charlotte's Web, he published an article on CNN.com apologizing for his previous opposition to medical marijuana. "We have been terribly and systematically misled for nearly 70 years in the United States, and I apologize for my own role in that," he wrote in a piece titled "Why I changed my mind on weed." Today, Paige Figi, Charlotte's mom serves as a volunteer roving ambassador, pleading with legislators around the country to reform federal laws that classify marijuana, heroin, LSD and ecstasy as Schedule I drugs with "no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse." When you ask Charlotte's Web moms what they think about the Stanley brothers, they use terms like "godly," "humble," "caring" and "compassionate."
At The Giving Tree of Denver, a dispensary, one of the managers prepared to close for the day. Dina Compassion marveled about the people she'd met so far this weekend (4/20/14). They'd come from all over the United States. They were people suffering from PTSD, seizures and arthritis. They were cancer survivors. They were parents worried about their sick children. They were residents of other states who are thinking of moving to Colorado so they can "manage pain in a safe way and not be carted off to jail," she said. What she sees in her dispensary, what she sees in the crowds of people who've descended upon Denver this weekend, is a growing sense of community, a feeling that's expanding nationwide. So even though some might think the 420 fight is over in Colorado, now that it's legal, Compassion says rallying behind the cause is as important as ever. "It's now a statement to other states, to the United States, a way to support the community," she said. "This isn't going away." - CNN
The medical marijuana children are helped by in Colorado is often a new type of cannabis bred for as much as 17% cannabidiol, or special extracts, medibles, or oils containing CBD, THC-A (a derivative of THC) or other isolated naturally derived cannabinoids. In fact, CBD helps adults and children, especially those suffering from seizure disorders, chronic pain, and related medical problems. Obviously what's missing from this medical marijuana approach is Delta-9 THC, the psychoactive compound most valued by stoners and marijuana growers. Ironically, medical marijuana refugee families who've found medical salvation for their children in Colorado's legalized marijuana environment are kind of "imprisoned" in the state. That's because they can't leave Colorado with their child's medical marijuana, it's federally illegal. And of course, the cost of moving to Colorado, and paying for marijuana medicine, is borne by the family of the child. Health insurance companies and government medical assistance don't consider medical marijuana a "reimbursable drug expense." Unless people who live in prohibitionist states have the willingness and ability to abandon their regular home lives and move to Colorado, like Dara Lightle and her family, they can't legally benefit or sometimes even access marijuana medicine.
More than 100 families have moved to Colorado Springs in recent months to obtain the oil, and mothers have launched lobbying efforts in many states to legalize medical marijuana for conditions such as epilepsy. Many of them have connected with Realm of Caring, a group started by a family who developed the "Charlotte's Web" low THC plant and the oil, which is rich in cannabidiol, or CBD, according to Heather Barnes-Jackson, the group's executive director. The plant is named for Charlotte Figi, who began taking the CBD oil (also called "Realm Oil") at 5 as a last resort and saw a drastic reduction in her violent grand mal seizures. Research has shown that CBD has anti-inflammatory, neuro-protectant and antioxidant properties through its interactions with the brain and the body, Barnes-Jackson said. Meanwhile, other families watch with envy, unable to uproot their families but hopeful that their states will consider a change in marijuana laws, at least for this oil, which has marijuana's intoxicating ingredient, THC, removed. - Health Tribune
As their children cooed from wheelchairs and rocked softly in their arms, the marijuana migrants of Colorado clasped hands, bowed their heads and said a prayer of cautious thanks. They thanked God for the dinner of roast turkey and mashed potatoes, for their children and for the marijuana-based serum that has drawn 100 families to Colorado on a desperate pilgrimage to quell the squalls of seizures inside their children's heads. They have come from Florida and Virginia, South Carolina and New York, lining up to treat their children with a promising but largely untested oil that is considered legal medicine in this cannabis friendly state. Their migration is one of myriad ways that a once illicit drug is reshaping life here in Colorado, which now stands at the forefront of the national debate over legalizing drugs. While these families are seeking treatment through a medical marijuana system that has existed for years, they are arriving at a time when the drug is becoming a mainstream part of public life, made legal for recreational use in a historic vote last year. The new arrivals call themselves marijuana refugees. Many have left jobs and family members behind in states where marijuana remains outlawed, or cannot be used to treat children. While some have moved their entire families, others are splintered, paying rent and raising children in two states. During the holidays, they join family gatherings through video chats and swap iPhone pictures of Christmas trees. - wn
There is an emerging trend in the marijuana industry in Colorado. An influx of women are running these businesses, whether it's retail pot shops, manufacturing edible products infused with cannabis or working in testing labs. "I like to call them the marijuana mavens," said Brooke Gehring, a former mortgage banker who now owns four pot stores in Colorado. "It blows my mind, the incredible women I've met in this industry," said Genifer Murray, founder and CEO of CannLabs, a state certified lab that tests the potency and safety of recreational pot products. Murray said so many women have come into the industry that even though they often compete against each other, they're starting a group called Women Grow to mentor the next generation of female cannabis entrepreneurs. "My lab director's a woman, the director of my micro department is a woman, I have a couple other women lab techs, and I was so excited when I looked through resumes and there were a lot of women!" - NBC News
Essentially, marijuana can extend the range of our free associative capacities. It increases the novel ways in which we find connections between ideas, and it also extends the range of ideas that we might somehow relate to one another. While not surprising, it does offer a scientific validation for what so many artists, philosophers and scientists have been saying for ages, that marijuana is a cognitive catalyst that can trigger heightened free-associative creativity, increased pattern recognition, and insight. "Cannabis is an assassin of referentiality inducing a BUTTERFLY EFFECT in THOUGHT,"says Darwin's Pharmacy author Rich Doyle. This effect "de-conditions our thinking" leading to what RealitySandwich.com described as "the really big connectivity ideas arrived at wholly outside the linear steps of argument. These are the gestalt perceiving, asterism forming "aha's!" that connect the dots and light up the sky with a new archetypal pattern." You can see the hyper-priming, free-associative effect at play when Doyle adds that "cannabis induces a parataxis wherein sentences resonate together and summon coherence in the bardos between one statement and other, rather than through explicit semantics. The words leap to mind, one after another, of themselves without having to be searched for," adds anthropologist Henry Munn. "It's a phenomenon similar to the automatic dictation of the surrealists except that here the flow of consciousness tends to be coherent, a rational enunciation of meanings." - The Huffington Post
More than two dozen women in the Denver area, ranging in age from late 20s to mid 60s, are running large grow operations, opening storefronts and developing topical products and edible lines. Women are selling marijuana friendly real estate, creating software for the industry, taking the reins at cannabis testing labs and climbing into leadership roles in the policymaking and legislative arena. The intent is to tip the statistics that show nearly half of men admit to having tried marijuana but only a third of women have. They are persuading more women to try to consider cannabis by staging pot themed events that appeal to the more feminine side of users, including spa and yoga retreats, upscale culinary and art soirees, bachelorette parties and even symphony and marijuana mashups. - The Denver Post
Why are women attracted to this industry? Could it be that they do well here because customers feel more comfortable with a woman behind the counter or running a business as marijuana tries to shake its shady image? "I think it starts from the compassionate side of medical marijuana," said Jaime Lewis, chief operating officer of Good Chemistry. "We were able to take care of people and allow them an alternative way to medicate outside of pharmaceuticals and what their doctors were recommending for them." Lewis is a former professional chef from San Francisco who began making edible marijuana products for AIDS patients. Now she's in Colorado baking and selling full time for both medical and recreational consumers. "I strongly believe there's that compassionate edge to it that attracts most women to the business," Lewis said. There are no hard figures on how many "Mary Janes" there are in the legal retail marijuana business in Colorado, but at the Cannabis Summit, women made up at least a third of the attendees. - NBC News
The researchers found that an oral tablet of THC, the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, tended to make the experience of pain more bearable, rather than actually reduce the intensity of the pain. MRI brain imaging showed reduced activity in key areas of the brain that substantiated the pain relief the study participants experienced. We have revealed new information about the neural basis of cannabis-induced pain relief, says lead researcher Dr Michael Lee of Oxford University's Centre for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain (FMRIB). "Cannabis does not seem to act like a conventional pain medicine. Some people respond really well, others not at all, or even poorly," he says. "Brain imaging shows little reduction in the brain regions that code for the sensation of pain, which is what we tend to see with drugs like opiates. Instead cannabis appears to mainly affect the emotional reaction to pain in a highly variable way." - University of Oxford
