The Queensland and Victorian state governments have joined forces with New South Wales to take part in medicinal cannabis clinical trials.
The NSW Government introduced the scientific trials last year to help treat patients with drug-resistant and uncontrollable epilepsy.
The new agreement means Victorians and Queenslanders suffering terminal or life-threatening conditions can take part in the NSW clinical trials.
The three trials will be conducted by the NSW Government and will examine the use of cannabis in providing relief for patients.
Victoria's Health Minister Jill Hennessy said the first trial would be open to children with severe, drug resistant epilepsy, due to start mid next year.
"There's a series of experts that oversee the eligibility for who gets to partake and we'll be doing all we can to support Victorian families and Victorian kids who meet that eligibility criteria to participate in the trial," she said.
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the focus of the trial would be for families whose children suffer from life-threatening seizures.
"Sometimes they're happening on a weekly and a daily basis, being rushed to hospital and this medical cannabis oil, there's scientific research which says that it can alleviate the pain that these young children are going through," she said.
The Italian army has unveiled its first cannabis farm, set up to try to lower the cost of medical marijuana in the country.
The army's foray into cannabis production was first announced by the government in September, and its first crop is coming along nicely, the Corriere della Sera website reports. The plants are being grown in a secure room at a military-run pharmaceutical plant in Florence, and the army expects to churn out 100kg (220lb) of the drug annually. The site also houses drying and packing facilities. "The aim of this operation is to make available to a growing number of patients a medical product which isn't always readily available on the market, at a much better price for the user," Col Antonio Medica tells the website. Medical marijuana is considered beneficial to treat a variety of conditions, particularly for managing chronic pain.
While Italian doctors can legally prescribe the drug, the cost isn't covered by the state. It is often prohibitively expensive for patients to buy it legally at pharmacies, something ministers want to change. At the moment medical marijuana is imported from abroad - primarily from the Netherlands - and costs up to 35 euros per gram. "We're aiming to lower the price to under 15 euros, maybe even around 5 euros per gram," says Col Medica. Private cannabis cultivation remains illegal in Italy, and selling the drug is also against the law.
Medicinal Cannabis crops will be grown, harvested and exported from Norfolk Island from June next year.
Australian company AusCann has signed a landmark license agreement - planting will begin this year.
Elaine Darby is the Managing Director of AusCann - Australasian Medicinal Cannabis.
Highlights
•Pure MDMA used in approved clinical settings is far safer than recreational use of Ecstasy or Molly.
•MDMA-assisted therapy could reduce social anxiety symptoms and increase social adaptability.
•The need to develop effective treatments for social anxiety in autistic adults is presently unmet.
•MDMA does not require ongoing administration to achieve lasting benefits.
On Monday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a bill into law legalizing the medicinal use of low-THC cannabis oil for patients suffering from intractable epileptic seizures.
On Monday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 339 into law, thus legalizing the medicinal use of low-THC, non-euphoric cannabis oil for the treatment of intractable epileptic seizures. According to The Texas Tribune, Governor Abbott said that the bill offers “healing and hope for children who are afflicted by relentless seizures caused by epilepsy.”
The bill only addresses the use of low-THC cannabidiol, also called CBD oil. As he signed the legislation, Governor Abbott specifically noted that he does not support the legalization of higher-THC marijuana for recreational or medical use and said, “I remain convinced that Texas should not legalize marijuana, nor should Texas open the door for conventional marijuana to be used for medicinal purposes. As governor, I will not allow it; SB 339 does not open the door to marijuana in Texas.”
KVUE-TV notes that the law requires patients to obtain approval from two different specialists in order to seek treatment with cannabis oil. The Texas Department of Public Safety will be charged with regulating cannabis oil manufacturers and dispensaries and must license at least three dispensaries by September 1, 2017, assuming that there are a sufficient number of qualified applicants by that time. Only neurologists and epileptologists will be allowed to prescribe cannabis oil under Texas law. Truth in Media’s Rachel Blevins noted that requiring doctors to prescribe (rather than recommend) the federally-illegal medication may put them at risk of federal prosecution. SB 339 limits cannabis oil potency to a THC ratio of 20 to 1.
According to KXAN-TV, Governor Abbott issued a statement on the legislation, which read, “There is currently no cure for intractable epilepsy and many patients have had little to no success with currently approved drugs. However, we have seen promising results from CBD oil testing and with the passage of this legislation, there is now hope for thousands of families who deal with the effects of intractable epilepsy every day.”
A statement by Marijuana Policy Project’s Texas political director Heather Fazio read, “While this program leaves most patients behind and we’re concerned about its functionality, today is one for the history books. The Texas Legislature is sending a resounding message: Marijuana is medicine.”
Medical marijuana patients will now be able to consume marijuana ”” and not just smoke it ”” as well as use other extracts and derivatives, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled today.
The unanimous ruling against the federal government expands the definition of medical marijuana beyond the "dried" form.
The country's highest court found the current restriction to dried marijuana violates the right to liberty and security "in a manner that is arbitrary and hence is not in accord with the principles of fundamental justice."
Restricting medical access to marijuana to a dried form has now been declared "null and void" ”” Sections 4 and 5 of the Controlled Drug and Substances Act, which prohibits possession and trafficking of non-dried forms of cannabis, will no longer be in effect.
How much longer will the conservatives cost this country our youth our economy our tax base whilst enriching criminals with obstinate wrong-headedness .
Boy Using Cannabis Oil: ‘I’d Rather Be Illegally Alive Than Legally Dead’
DENVER (CBS4) – There is new research on the use of marijuana as medicine in Colorado and a Marijuana and Health Symposium at National Jewish Health on Saturday explored nearly a dozen studies looking at using pot for things like seizures and insomnia.
Four times a day Coltyn takes his medicine. It’s cannabis oil used to treat his Crohn’s disease, an illness he’s been fighting since age 11, and up until last year it looked like a battle he was losing.
“I was just on every pharmaceutical there was out there until I would up in a wheelchair,” Coltyn said.
“He got sick and we had no other options,” Coltyn’s mother Wendy Turner said.
Desperate for a miracle his parents moved him from the Midwest to Colorado in 2014 and turned to cannabis oil.
“We thought, ‘Well, why not try?’ And it worked,” Wendy said.
Their case was just one shared at National Jewish Health’s Marijuana and Health Symposium.
“We are very proud of this program in terms of the potential,” said Ken Gershman with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment said.
Gershman says nine current and upcoming studies are looking at marijuana as a treatment for illnesses stretching from insomnia and inflammatory bowel disease to post-traumatic stress disorder.
Prohibition was a failure in the 1920s, and, for similar reasons, the so-called war on drugs has been a disaster. Forty years after Richard Nixon declared this war, consumption worldwide is up, violence has increased and the rule of law has collapsed, especially in Latin America.
Basic economics tells us that when there is artificial pressure on supply, prices go up and margins increase ”” the perfect incentives for criminal activities. The same mistake was made in the United States almost a century ago with Prohibition. As early as 1925, some observers started to see that this policy, far from stopping crime, was leading to the formation of large networks of well-funded crime syndicates.
In a recent global report on homicides produced by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, it is suggested that poverty and inequality are the main factors that explain the increase in crime rates across Latin America. Curiously in Africa, a region much poorer than Latin America, homicide rates have not shot up and the U.N. report does not offer a coherent explanation why this is the case.
The U.N. report correctly points out that there is a clear correlation between levels of impunity and homicide rates, a phenomenon that is unmanageable in some regions of Mexico and Central America. It should be noted that seven of the eight most violent countries in the world are located on the cocaine route to the United States.
It’s been more than 40 years since the war on drugs was declared in Washington. Mexico has blindly followed the lead of its northern neighbor throughout this period, and there is little to show for it beyond the rise of violence and the steady decomposition of society. The economic forces are too vast. This is a multibillion-dollar industry that has subverted social order and the rule of law. Prohibition only means that the state has renounced its right to regulate narcotics by leaving this activity and its enforcement at the sole discretion of the drug lords.
POST-traumatic stress disorder can be a crippling illness that forces those suffering to re-experience trauma through flashbacks or nightmares.
Unfortunately, for many people suffering PTSD, the conventional remedies such as daily medications and behavioural therapies often have no effect.
This is why a team of psychiatrists and psychologists in Vancouver have developed an unconventional treatment for the disorder.
The team has begun clinical tests to see if administering MDMA (ecstasy) will help relieve the debilitating symptoms patients endure.
Mark Haden is the Chairman of the Canadian branch of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). He has been the driving force behind getting this longwinded project off the ground.
Despite taking six years of planning and costing more than $A210,000 before approval was granted by Health Canada, Mr Haden said he was glad his vision could finally become a reality.
“Yes, it’s been difficult ”” but, at the end of the day, they said yes, and I do want to applaud them for saying yes,” he told Macleans.
Having spent 30 years working as a drug counsellor with addicts in Vancouver and witnessing the death of brother following a botched cook of MDMA in 2008, Mr Haden is no stranger to the adverse effects of drugs.
It’s been 15 years since Hawaii legalized medical marijuana, but now the island state finally plans to roll out dispensaries.
Hawaiian Gov. David Ige signed a bill on Tuesday that would allow medical marijuana dispensaries to legally operate, reports the LA Times.
Ige also signed an accompanying bill banning discrimination against medical marijuana patients.
“The bill sets a timeline,” said Ige in a statement. “We will make a good-faith effort to create a fair process that will help the people most in need.”
The state will license eight dispensaries that can begin opening its doors to patients by November 2016, according to the state’s Department of Health.
DENVER – A year after Colorado's marijuana tax for schools came in far short of its goal, the fund is setting records and has accrued more money in the first five months in 2015 than it did for all of 2014.
Recently released tax data showed the 15 percent excise tax for school construction hit $3.5 million in May, the most recent data available. That brings the 2015 total to $13.7 million, edging the $13.3 million it raised in all of 2014.
The jump is partly because there are more marijuana stores and partly because shops last year were given a one-time tax-exempt transfer of their medical plants to the recreational pot side, The Denver Post reported.
The new pot tax data also showed that recreational marijuana sales in Colorado plateaued in spring 2015. Those retail sales hardly fluctuated between March and May, staying between $42.4 and $42.7 million, totaling $42.5 million in May.
May's medical marijuana sales in Colorado were at their highest since last October, totaling $32.4 million.
No matter what the excise tax produces this year, Colorado schools will get the promised infusion of $40 million. That's because state lawmakers changed the funding earlier this year when they agreed to send voters a revised pot-tax plan to comply with constitutional spending restrictions.
Senators from across the political divide will endorse a bill to legalise medical marijuana despite warnings it could create a regulatory nightmare.
Fairfax Media can reveal that a committee made up of Coalition, Labor and crossbench senators will strongly recommend that Parliament pass a cross-party bill to set up a medical marijuana regulator.
Spearheaded by Greens Leader Richard Di Natale, the Regulator of Medicinal Cannabis Bill would effectively make the federal government responsible for overseeing the production, distribution and use of the drug.
The bill was introduced into Parliament last November and sent to a committee in February. After conducting public hearings around the country and attracting almost 200 public submissions, the committee is due to deliver its report on August 10.
Sources say the committee will back the bill despite strong concerns from the Health Department.
In its submission to the committee, the department said the bill would set up a new regulatory system that would create "complexity and uncertainty" and potentially clash with the Therapeutic Goods Act.
Department secretary Martin Bowles warned the bill left important legal and practical issues unidentified or unresolved, "leading to the risk of regulatory gap, overlapping laws and a lack of clarity about the exercise of jurisdiction by agencies and possible inconsistency with other existing laws".
It's official: the U.S. government's top drug cop has acknowledged that marijuana is less dangerous than heroin.
At a meeting with reporters yesterday at the headquarters of the Drug Enforcement Administration, acting chief Chuck Rosenberg said that "heroin is clearly more dangerous than marijuana," Matt Ferner of the Huffington Post reports. This clarifies a statement he made last week, when he told reporters that marijuana was "probably not" as dangerous as heroin, adding "I'm not an expert."
This shouldn't be news. Researchers have known for decades that marijuana is a much safer substance than heroin -- and nearly all other psychoactive drugs, for that matter. Heroin overdoses kill thousands of people each year, while marijuana has no known toxic dose. It's considerably less habit-forming than heroin, alcohol, nicotine and other drugs. And medical marijuana treatments hold a lot of potential -- particularly as an alternative to dangerous prescription painkillers.
The first two states to legalize recreational marijuana have collectively raked in at least $200 million in marijuana tax revenue, according to the latest tax data -- and they're putting those dollars to good use.
In Colorado, after about a year and a half of legal recreational marijuana sales, the state has collected more than $117 million in excise taxes from both the recreational and medical marijuana markets, according to the most recent data from the Colorado Department of Revenue.
Washington state got a slower start. Its retail shops didn't begin selling recreational marijuana until July of last year, but they are keeping pace with Colorado's. About $83 million in excise taxes have already been collected in the year since sales first began, according to the most recent tax data from the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board.
And the total haul for both states is several million higher if all additional revenue from marijuana -- such as sales taxes, jurisdictional taxes, fees and licensing costs -- is included.
That marijuana revenue is, of course, just a drop in the bucket of the states' respective multi-billion dollar annual budgets, but it's real revenue nonetheless, revenue that helps pay for the very regulation that supports the legal marijuana market.
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