There are more than a dozen legislative bills dealing with medical marijuana, and some of those would bring limitations to current and future businesses.
Oklahoma marijuana dispensaries face oncoming challenges
As of June, Oklahomans spent more than $385 million this year on medical marijuana.
Another record month for medical marijuana sales in Oklahoma
[Editor’s Note – Dr. K’s findings are worth pursuing, and also need to be contextualized. We want transparency up-front. We’re interested in noting what should be pursued re the medicine and messaging, highlighting what’s interesting while not being an industry cheerleader. ]
1) Headline is wider-reaching than the findings
2) Biased audience
3) Better to repeat statewide at point of contact with patients with additional rigors, a wider population / larger n (this one: 392), with less of the selection bias
[E.N. Great opportunity to speak to specifics as possible: proposing, e.g., a medical facility, specific staff, funding sources, would be a good challenge to the people involved — in medicine and politics — and also a way to promote your availability to participate in the follow-up study you propose.]
Majority of patient condition-specifics and findings cluster around pain, inflammation — most / stronger evidence in this study than other meds / conditions
30% didn’t disclose their cannabis usage to their doctor
[E.N. Great opportunity to speak to why this is not optimal patient behavior]
Small % of patients used medical cannabis when there are existing FDA-approved options:
2.5% used for chemo-induced nausea / appetite promotion
Why not FDA-approved Marinol, Dranabinol
3.8% used for seizure – Why not FDA-approved Epidiolex
Medical Cannabis Users’ Comparisons between Medical Cannabis and Mainstream Medicine
Related article Adam referenced:
Medical Cannabis Use Is Associated With Decreased Opiate Medication Use in a Retrospective Cross-Sectional Survey of Patients With Chronic Pain.
[E.N. Responding to the latter could be a separate article to keep the first article in response to Dr. K tight and straightforward. The hooks include showing UMich pride and changing the conversation about cannabis where there’s fact-based pushback regarding “cannabis as off-ramp vs gateway drug.” It’s completely up to you and your time available — use what you want and how.]
[tweet https://twitter.com/TB_Times/status/1003048618109079552 width=300]
It’s important work making cannabis accessible. It should be as ubiquitous as a week’s worth of opioids at Walmart.
[tweet https://twitter.com/FiveThirtyEight/status/993847755045994496 width=300]
“Walmart’s new opioid rule limits customers’ prescription supply to seven days’ worth at a time.”
Cannabis could be a cure for lung cancer, according to a research laboratory in Cardiff.
MediPen research facility in Cardiff have been experimenting with cannabinoids and its effectiveness in slowing down the growth of cancer cells, something their managing director says is the first of its kind in the world, according to Metro.
MediPen’s managing director Jordan Owen said: “The process which we’re currently going through now is looking at the cells. We want to slow down the process of metastasis. If we can slow down that process by doing different experiments with cannabinoids, then we can effectively slow down the growth of cancer.”
Such a breakthrough would no doubt change the lives of millions, but would also support the claims many pro-cannabis individuals have long believed: that this plant carries significant medicinal qualities.
A supplement derived from cannabis may help alcohol and cocaine addicts overcome their cravings, new research suggests.
Recovering rats given cannabidiol (CBD) are less likely to relapse when exposed to drugs, a study, by the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, found, according to the Daily Mail.
This is thought to be due to the supplement easing anxiety and stress, as well as reducing impulsive behaviour, according to the researchers.
After just three days of receiving CBD, recovering rats are still less likely to relapse five months later, the study found.
The researchers hope the findings will assist in the development of treatments to prevent human drug relapses.
Cannabis could soon be legal in Switzerland.
The Swiss Council of States, Switzerland’s smaller chamber of parliament, unanimously approved a bill allowing studies and pilot programs in the landlocked Alpine nation, according to Herb.
The Council called for an experimental article in the Swiss Federation’s Narcotics Act that would allow for scientific research projects including trials of a “coffee shop” system of cannabis distribution similar to that of Amsterdam.
Five Swiss cities have already called for such coffeeshop pilot programs.
Arkansas’ attorney general is appealing a judge’s order that forbids the state to license five companies to grow medical marijuana.
Attorney General Leslie Rutledge’s office on Friday filed a notice that it’s appealing Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen’s ruling that the MMJ licensing process is unconstitutional to the state Supreme Court, according to Marijuana Business Daily.
Griffen had ruled that the state’s process for licensing the companies violated the 2016 voter-approved amendment legalizing marijuana for patients with certain medical conditions.
The judge sided with an unsuccessful applicant that had sued the state over the process.
Can cannabis cure cancer? That’s a question Prof. David “Dedi” Meiri, head of the Laboratory of Cancer Biology and Cannabanoid Research at the Technion-Israeli Institute of Technology, is trying to figure out. The answer so far is a very guarded “maybe.”
Meiri was one of some 70 speakers among the 800 participants at the fourth annual CannaTech conference in Tel Aviv, Israel, according to Israel21c
CannaTech was founded in 2015 as a platform to enable the identification and incubation of world-class innovative solutions for the cannabis industry. The conference also has taken place in London and is scheduled for Mexico and Australia later this year.
While there was no product for sale in the vast exhibit hall, there was plenty of buzz from companies developing everything from medical inhalers, which deliver medical cannabis the way similar devices dose asthma powders, to specific treatments (at least two companies are working on cannabis alternatives to sleeping pills).