Keep up with the latest news on the fight against marijuana in California and around the country.
For California voters, recreational marijuana legalization was sold as a win-win-win: billions of dollars in new tax revenues, a chance for law enforcement to focus on more serious crimes, and the societal acceptance of a relatively low-risk alternative to alcohol.
But as the state stumbles through its second year of fully legalized cannabis, the reality appears to be more lose-lose-lose.
Read MoreTo Weiner the villain is the for-profit marijuana industry. Legalization has gained widespread support in the US thanks to a two-pronged PR strategy of promoting cannabis as a “medicine” and wellness product, even when the evidence of its benefits is anecdotal or non-existent, and trying to demolish the stigma of cannabis as a drug for losers. “Their goal is not public health, their goal is addiction,” Weiner says. “When I speak out against this topic it’s against my financial interest – which I can’t say for the people on the other side.”
Read MoreIt’s been a little more than a year since California legalized marijuana — the largest such experiment in the United States — but law enforcement officials say the unlicensed, illegal market is still thriving and in some areas has even expanded.
Read MoreBecause no tax was levied to pay for the costs of regulating a medical marijuana industry in Georgia, taxpayers will bear that burden so that state-wide public officials and legislators – maybe even some who were actually all in that same room – can make money growing and processing medical pot.
Read MorePoliticians are pushing to legalize recreational marijuana in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, following 10 other states. But the Parent Teacher Association, local health officials and pediatricians are pushing back, warning about the permanent damage to youngsters’ brains caused by weed. If you have children, trust the PTA, not the pols.
Read MoreStates rush to legalize recreational pot, even as evidence of its harms grows.
Read MoreIn the more than two years since California voters approved the licensed growing and sale of recreational marijuana, the state has seen a half-dozen government corruption cases as black-market operators try to game the system, through bribery and other means. The cases are tarnishing an already troubled roll-out of the state permitting of pot businesses as provided for when voters approved Proposition 64 in November 2016.
Read MoreDuring the 21 years that California’s multibillion-dollar unregulated medical marijuana market thrived, cannabis operators learned to create elaborate schemes to disguise their connections to unlicensed shops. And now that some operators are also tied to valuable licensed businesses, Montes said, double dippers have become even more careful about burying their identities.
Read MoreAdvocates frequently argue that marijuana should be legalized as a source of new tax revenue. But considering that most marijuana is smoked by low-income individuals, such a tax would be regressive in nature. Increasing harmful consumption taxes on poor communities does little to advance social equity.
Read MoreWhile legislators debate the details of NJ marijuana legalization, the black market is bigger than ever. we spent a night at a marijuana "pop-up" and saw chocolate bars and brownies, oils and vape cartridges and huge jars of illegal weed.
Read MoreTen years ago, when you referred to cannabis, you were talking about dried plant material that people smoked,” says Ryan Vandrey, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
“Now, cannabis — which refers to marijuana and hemp — is a blanket term that could also mean hemp oil, topical creams, CBD products, high-THC concentrates that are smoked, vaporized or orally ingested and more.”
And confusion abounds.
Read More“It might be available at the local 7-11 in Pennsylvania,” said Dr. Lee “but any product you get on the market is not federally regulated by the F.D.A, so the purity and safety and quality are questionable.”
Indeed, a recent study that evaluated dozens of CBD products ordered online found that nearly 70 percent were not labeled accurately and had either higher or lower concentrations of the ingredient than indicated on the label. Some also contained THC.
Dr. Hurd, who has been studying CBD for nearly 10 years, warns that the expectations around the substance are unrealistic. “People are making it out to be a nirvana kind of drug, and that’s a problem,” she said. “One compound cannot cure everything.”
Read MoreAuditors concluded that regulators have failed to meet even basic promises. It found, for instance, that just 3 percent of recreational marijuana retailers had been inspected and only about a third of growers. It said the state’s medical marijuana program, long a source of black market diversion both in the state and nationally, has “structural weaknesses” that “greatly increase the risk of diversion.”
Read MoreClaims that marijuana relieves pain may be true. But the clinical studies that have been done compare it with a placebo, not even a pain reliever like ibuprofen. That’s not the type of rigorous evaluation we pursue for medications. What’s more, every intoxicant would pass that sort of test because you don’t experience pain as acutely when you are high. If weed is a pain reliever, so is Budweiser.
Read MoreAlmost everything you think you know about the health effects of cannabis, almost everything advocates and the media have told you for a generation, is wrong.
They’ve told you marijuana has many different medical uses. In reality marijuana and THC, its active ingredient, have been shown to work only in a few narrow conditions. They are most commonly prescribed for pain relief. But they are rarely tested against other pain relief drugs like ibuprofen—and in July, a large four-year study of patients with chronic pain in Australia showed cannabis use was associated with greater pain over time.
Read MoreIn California, voters were sold the line that the state could collect upwards of $1 billion in revenue. The reality is the state has failed to bring in anywhere close to that mark — it fell 75 percent short of it through September. All this prompted outgoing California Gov. Jerry Brown to say, “I have not counted on any revenue from marijuana. Who’s counting on the marijuana revenue? People said that to make it more plausible for voters.”
So what’s the issue? It appears the black market is nimbler than anyone thought. In fact, it's growing stronger. One in five marijuana users in the state continue to purchase the drug off the street as opposed to buying it from retail stores. The situation is so bad that foreign cartels and criminal gangs are turning whole neighborhoods into pot-growing operations and even growing the drug on national lands.
And yet Big Marijuana — whose components now include Big Alcohol and Big Tobacco — keep claiming they can end the illicit trade of the drug through “regulation.”
Read MoreAs legalization spreads, more Americans are becoming heavy users of cannabis, despite its links to violence and mental illness
Read MoreWith large studies in peer-reviewed journals showing that marijuana increases the risk of psychosis and schizophrenia, the scientific literature around the drug is far more negative than it was 20 years ago.
Read MoreMarijuana Stinks and neighbors have had enough
Carpinteria High School, in particular, is flanked by cannabis greenhouses that have sent odors wafting in. In the past two years, students have complained of headaches, parents have grown angry and the high school has had to warn visiting sports teams that they might encounter the odor.
Read MoreThe costs associated with commercial marijuana are only going to go up as the long-term health consequences have not been fully determined. Like tobacco, commercial marijuana is likely to have health consequences that we won’t be able to determine for decades. Those costs are not configured in this report.
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