DENVER, CO — Colorado’s Democratic Governor Jared Polis has signed legislation, House Bill 1028, expanding the pool of patients qualified to access medical cannabis to include those with autism spectrum disorder.
The measure also mandates the state Board of Health to prioritize grant funding to study the use of cannabis for autism and other pediatric conditions.
Recent clinical trial data — such as those here, here, and here — report that the adjunctive use of cannabidiol is associated with reduced ASD symptoms and is well-tolerated among patients.
SALT LAKE CITY, UT — Republican Governor Gary Herbert of New Mexico has signed legislation into law amending the state’s expungement laws.
House Bill 431, The ‘Clean Slate’ Act, creates a process for the automatic expungement and deletion of certain criminal convictions, including misdemeanor convictions for the possession of a controlled substance.
To be eligible for automatic expungement, one must have completed their sentence and possess no subsequent convictions for a period of five years.
According to reporting by the Salt Lake City Tribune, Utah will become only the second state in the nation to enact such a broad automatic expungement policy.
LANSING, MI — The presence of THC in blood is not correlated with driving performance and is not a reliable indicator of psychomotor impairment, according to recommendations made by a state-appointed traffic safety task force.
A report issued by the Michigan Impaired Driving Safety Commission finds that peak THC blood levels are not associated with maximal behavioral impairment and further finds that the compound’s influence upon driving performance varies significantly among individual consumers. As a result, “The Commission recommends against the establishment of a threshold of delta-9-THC bodily content for determining driving impairment and instead recommends the use of roadside sobriety tests to determine whether a driver is impaired.”
NORML similarly argues that the identification of THC in blood is a poor predictor of either recent cannabis exposure or impaired performance.
The Commission’s report further opines that subjects influenced by cannabis “typically drive slower, keep greater following distances, and take fewer risks than when sober.” They add, “While there is some uncertainty as to the crash risk associated with cannabis impairment alone, the research is clear that the risk is lower than that of alcohol impairment.”
Five states — Montana, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Washington — impose various per se limits for the detection of specific amounts of THC in blood while eleven states (Arizona, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Utah, and Wisconsin) impose zero tolerant per se standards. In those states, it is a criminal violation of the traffic safety laws to operate a motor vehicle with detectable levels of THC in blood. Colorado law infers driver impairment in instances where THC is detected inblood at levels of 5ng/ml or higher.
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SILVER SPRING, MD — The US Food and Drug Administration has scheduled a public hearing to address issues surrounding the “safety, manufacturing, product quality, marketing, labeling, and sale” of products containing hemp-derived cannabinoids such as CBD.
When consumers hear the words “craft cannabis,” they might assume it’s unaffordable or overpriced.
Ron Throgmartin, the chief executive officer of Diego Pellicer Worldwide, wants to bust that myth.
When Diego Pellicer, a cannabis retailer with stores in Washington state and Colorado, was founded in 2013 in Seattle, its goal was to offer local consumers “craft or connoisseur cannabis,” Throgmartin said.
But, he said, “our concept has a place in all communities because one of our fundamental beliefs is our stores and our experience is not exclusive to the wealthy.”
Here, Throgmartin talks with Marijuana Business Magazine about how craft cannabis purveyors can design stores and stock products that appeal to everyone.
ALBUQUERQUE, NM — Democratic Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico has signed legislation into law allowing for those with a variety of past criminal convictions to petition to have their records expunged.
House Bill 370, The Criminal Record Expungement Act, permits those convicted of certain violations, misdemeanors, or felonies — following the completion of their sentence and payment of applicable fines — to petition the court for an order to expunge arrest records and public records related to that conviction.
Those seeking to vacate misdemeanor convictions must wait two years following the completion of their sentence, and have no subsequent convictions, prior to seeking expungement. Those with felony convictions must wait six-years prior to petitioning the court.
After a hearing on the petition, the court shall issue a ruling within 30 days.
Authors reported that samples available via the U-Miss program shared genetics typically associated with industrial hemp, not commercially available cannabis.
They concluded: “NIDA research grade marijuana was found to genetically group with hemp samples along with a small subset of commercial drug-type cannabis. A majority of commercially available drug-type cannabis was genetically very distinct from NIDA samples. These results suggest that subjects consuming NIDA research grade marijuana may experience different effects than average consumers.”
A separate study published in 2017 reported that U-Miss samples contain far lower levels of both THC and CBD than do commercially available cannabis. Clinicians wishing to conduct FDA-approved clinical trials on cannabis have long complained that federally-provided samples are of inferior quality.
According to the program’s current marijuana menu, no available samples contain more than seven percent THC and all samples contain less than one percent CBD.
In 2016, the US Drug Enforcement Administration publicly announced that it would, for the first time, begin accepting applications from private entities wishing to grow research-grade cannabis. However, since that time, neither the agency nor the Justice Department have taken any action to move this application process forward.
Full text of the study, “Research grade marijuana supplied by the National Institute on Drug Abuse is genetically divergent from commercially available Cannabis,” appears online here.
ALBUQUERQUE, NM — Democratic Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham has signed a pair of bills into law amending New Mexico’s medical cannabis program to expand patients’ access to the plant and to provide additional legal protections.
Senate Bill 406 expands the pool of patients eligible for cannabis therapy to include those diagnosed with post-traumatic stress, severe chronic pain, Crohn’s disease, Lou Gehrig’s disease, sleep apnea, and neuropathy, among other newly specified conditions.
It also enacts explicit legal protections prohibiting employers, social service workers, and hospitals from arbitrarily discriminating against patients solely for their medical cannabis status and/or for their failure to pass a drug test.
The measure prohibits regulators from placing limits on the percentage of THC or other cannabinoids in therapeutic products and it establishes reciprocity with other states’ medical cannabis programs.
Separate legislation, Senate Bill 204 establishes regulations and procedures for the storage and administration of certain medical cannabis products to students in school settings.
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