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This report finds that legalization in Illinois, however, would cost at least $670 million, outweighing the projected tax revenue.

The Netherland’s attempt to divide markets into soft vs. hard drugs by allowing coffee shops to sell cannabis did not result in lower consumption of hard drugs. Overall it has been a social disaster.
The cannabis grown and sold today is not same drug as was available in the 1970s. The average THC has increased to more than 15%. Cannabis issue can clearly lead to addiction. The damage to the brain from chronic use is worse compared with chronic use of heroin. Among the negative effects... Read More

Note:  If you look at the blue bar you will see that opioid deaths have more than quadrupled since medical marijuana was legalized in Colorado (in 2000). And deaths rose from 377 in 2012 (year mj legalized) to 504 in 2016. No... Read More

Florida has lowered the original cost of the fee for doctors to be licensed to prescribe medical marijuana to $250 from $1,000 and reduced the training time to two hours from eight. It has increased the number of physicians able to recommend medical marijuana by 48 percent since the beginning of the year.
“We are looking at Florida as the biggest medical marijuana market in the United States,” he said. “As more dispensaries open and more doctors get qualified, you reach a critical mass... Read More

They also discovered that prenatal marijuana use was associated with a 50 percent increased chance of low birth weight regardless of tobacco use during... Read More

Conclusions: Our findings disconfirm the hypothesis that a population-level negative correlation between medical marijuana use and prescription drug harms occurs because medical marijuana users are less likely to use prescription drugs, either medically or nonmedically. Medical marijuana users should be a target population in efforts to combat nonmedical prescription drug use.

From 2005 to 2015, 4,202 marijuana-related visits were identified. Behavioral health evaluation was obtained for 2,813 (67%); a psychiatric diagnosis was made for the majority (71%) of these visits. Coingestants were common; the most common was ethanol (12%). Marijuana-related visits increased from 1.8 per 1,000 visits in 2009 to 4.9 in 2015. (p = < .0001) CONCLUSIONS: Despite national survey data suggesting no appreciable difference in adolescent marijuana use, our data demonstrate... Read More

1. Legalizing cannabis has been shown to increase the rates of motor vehicle accidents.
2. Cannabis use is a risk factor for mental illness.
3. Inhaled Cannabis use is a risk factor for respiratory infections.
4. Cannabis use increases the rate of vascular disease. Cannabis is the third most often identified drug of abuse
5. Cannabis use during pregnancy has been associated with increased risk of adverse birth outcomes
6. Legalization of cannabis has been shown... Read More

It is a sham that expands the conditions that qualify an individual for “medical marijuana” to any condition and for any person, no matter of age. It is a scheme to establish a system of “fake” medicine to further the game plan of the marijuana industry for full commercialism that will allow anyone for any reason to buy marijuana for the high they desire and the profit the industry demands. It is now up to the Vermont House to recognize what is happening and stop it before it is too late.... Read More

Overall, while less dangerous than opioids by far, and possibly helpful for some conditions, including pain, no findings, to my knowledge, clearly demonstrate that marijuana use positively impacts people with opioid use disorder. Moreover, marijuana use carries risks, including cannabis use disorder, psychosis and cognitive impairment, as well as additive effects when used with other substances, including opioids.

Kara Macek, spokeswoman for the GHSA, said the organization could point to several possible factors in the high level of fatalities: increased exposure to danger as more drivers hit the road and more people move to urbanized areas, an uptick in distracted driving from cellphone use, or even an increase in accidents in states that have legalized recreational marijuana use.
The GHSA report noted that in some states that have legalized recreational marijuana — Alaska, Colorado, Maine,... Read More

Marijuana use is associated with an increased risk of prescription opioid use.  
Marijuana use seems to strengthen the relationship between pain and depression and anxiety, not ease it.

"Every person I've ever asked that has a drug addiction problem, I would ask them intentionally 'what was your drug of choice that set you on this path?' Marijuana. Every time, marijuana," Judd said.
He went on to say that when you look at all the drugs killing people and contributing to drug related deaths, "leaving marijuana out of the recipe would be a horrible mistake."

“The violence is there with other drugs, but we don’t see the homicides associated with other narcotics as we do with marijuana,” said Anoka County Sheriff’s Lt. Wayne Heath, commander of the Anoka-Hennepin Narcotics and Violent Crimes Task Force. “No one knows why in marijuana it leads to that extra step.”

An 11-month-old Colorado boy’s death from a heart condition was likely related to ingestion of marijuana, two Denver doctors have concluded, but the precise link remains unclear.

Cryptococcal meningitis in a daily cannabis smoker without evidence of immunodeficiency.
Cryptococcal meningitis is a life-threatening condition most commonly observed in immunocompromised individuals. We describe a daily cannabis smoker without evidence of immunodeficiency presenting with confirmed Cryptococcus neoformans meningitis. An investigation of cannabis samples from the patient's preferred dispensary demonstrated contamination with several varieties... Read More

New research reveals that several species, including the northern spotted owl, are succumbing to rat poison from thousands of "unpermitted private marijuana grow sites" in the northwestern California counties of Humboldt, Mendocino and Del Norte.
It's the contamination of the owls' primary food source — mice and rats, which, like humans, are attracted to the aromatic crop — that has been the animals' undoing... Read More

“Every statistical study has seen an increase in marijuana use,” he said. “There has been an increase in youths going to rehab for addiction to marijuana. There have been increases in car accidents. There has been an increase in fatalities related to marijuana. There has been an increase in workplace incidences related to marijuana and a decrease in productivity. And there has been an increase in robberies.”
“There has been nothing good for Colorado, except for maybe the increased tax... Read More

A team of law enforcement agents from the U.S. Forest Service, local police and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service hike deep into the Plumas National Forest to help with cleanup and protect scientists who are studying illegal marijuana grow sites. Even after a site has been raided, growers can return. The nets are for helicopters that will lift tons of garbage out of the site. On this reclamation trip, teams ultimately cleaned up about 7 tons of garbage, 4,000 pounds of fertilize, and 4... Read More

But she didn't have cancer. She had an obscure syndrome called cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, a condition only recently acknowledged by the medical community. It affects a small population — namely, a subset of marijuana users who smoke multiple times a day for months, years or even decades.

There's no hard data on the prevalence of the illness. But in California and Colorado, which have loosened marijuana laws in recent years, some emergency physicians say they're... Read More

bstract

Although recent Cannabis use is widely reported to be associated with drug-related traffic accidents, the evidence that Cannabis users show an increased risk of being involved in road crashes is still not unequivocally proved. The purpose of the present work is to provide an objective assessment of this hypothesis, by comparing the frequency of occurrence of positive urine analyses in drivers involved in traffic accidents (n = 1406) with that observed in a control population... Read More

Marijuana has both short- and long-term effects on the body.
Within a few minutes of smoking marijuana, a person feels the effects of pot, as THC is rapidly passes from the lungs into the bloodstream, making its way to the brain and other organs.
What causes the “high” people experience is marijuana’s effect on over-activating parts of the brain containing specific brain cell receptors. This leads to feelings of an altered sense of time, other altered senses, changes in mood,... Read More

WASHINGTON - The Department of Justice today issued a memo on federal marijuana enforcement policy announcing a return to the rule of law and the rescission of previous guidance documents. Since the passage of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) in 1970, Congress has generally prohibited the cultivation, distribution, and possession of marijuana.
In the memorandum, Attorney General Jeff Sessions directs all U.S. Attorneys to enforce the laws enacted by Congress and to follow well-... Read More

Conclusions:

Cannabis use appears to increase rather than decrease the risk of developing nonmedical prescription opioid use and opioid use disorder.

Community-by-community, residents of Massachusetts are deciding if they want to be able to drive to the corner store to buy marijuana.

NIH’s 2017 Monitoring the Future survey shows both vaping and marijuana are more popular than traditional cigarettes or pain reliever misuse

He is no longer employed by Amtrak. No amount of marijuana use by an engineer is acceptable, the railroad has said.

there is incomplete evidence of the efficacy and safety of medical use of cannabis in the clinical contexts considered in this review. Furthermore, for many of the outcomes considered, the confidence in the estimate of the effect was again low or very low. To give conclusive answers to the efficacy and safety of cannabis used for medical purposes in the clinical contexts considered, further studies are needed, with higher quality, larger sample sizes, and possibly using the same diagnostic... Read More

“My job is to represent the people of Jacksonville Beach and as I mentioned during the council meeting, 81 percent of the people may have voted for medical marijuana. But it wasn’t 81 percent of Jacksonville Beach residents looking to put a dispensary in Jacksonville Beach,” Mayor Charlie Latham said.
#NotInMyBackyard

The overlapping endocannabinoid and endogenous opioid systems may explain this patient's response to therapy, and this synergistic relationship is discussed.
The endocannabinoid and endogenous opioid systems are syngergistic, which may explain the effect of naloxone in cannabis toxicity. Cannabinoid and opioid receptors belong to the rhodopsin subfamily of G-protein-coupled receptors which, when activated, reduce cellular levels of cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) by inhibiting... Read More

The number of drivers involved in fatal crashes in Colorado who tested positive for marijuana has risen sharply each year since 2013, more than doubling in that time, federal and state data show. A Denver Post analysis of the data and coroner reports provides the most comprehensive look yet into whether roads in the state have become more dangerous since the drug’s legalization.

A native of New Mexico, Markowski, 23, started doing drugs while living and working in Germany. First, smoking marijuana, then snorting methamphetamine.

Council members cite lack of local control as reason. The city of Venice will ban medical marijuana dispensaries within city limits, because current state statutes do not allow any form of local regulation above those placed on pharmacies. 
In moving toward prohibiting dispensaries, Venice joins the city of Sarasota and town of Longboat Key, though Sarasota is looking to modify its approach that would treat dispensaries the same as stand-alone pharmacies.

“The best long-term solution is prevention,” Sessions said. “The best action is not to start. Just say no.”

Those three words — embraced by First Lady Nancy Reagan in the 1980s to discourage young people from using recreational drugs — are back.

On Friday, as Summit County released its latest overdose numbers for the past seven days — 58 residents sought help in... Read More

We therefore must educate our youngsters, parents and educators before any use of marijuana or alcohol begins. We then must identify those individuals for whom marijuana or alcohol use has become problematic, getting them into an effective program of treatment before they progress to more dangerous alternatives.
 
Schools must revamp curriculums so children understand that any opioid misuse, be it prescription or street drugs, is a "red line" that they cannot cross.

Updated information on Florida counties and city councils banning 'medical' marijuana dispensaries.

Snelling argued that not everyone using medical marijuana is severely ill, with symptoms like insomnia, mood swings and chronic itching qualifying for the drug. She said she is worried misuse will be widespread.
“Voting for something to be legalized as a medicine by popular vote or through legislative does not make it a prescription drug,” said Miller.

Two local mothers showed up at the pow-wow to voice their concerns about an influx of dispensaries. One of the mothers, Teresa Miller, believes cannabis acts as a gateway drug.
“Years ago, when my son smoked pot and spring boarded to opioids, a severe addiction, I told myself if I could save one family from going through what our family and thousands of families around our state have gone through with a disease of addiction, then I would,” Miller said.
Miller also showed the... Read More

Indian River County joined many governments across the state banning dispensaries rather than accepting them as pharmacies, the only other option allowed in a state law adopted this summer.

Marijuana’s Negative Effects
Construction workers must have full use of their skills and faculties while performing their jobs. Medical marijuana may have positive medical benefits, but there are also well-documented negative effects. Some negative effects to the central nervous system include changes in sensory perception, altered thought formation and expression, short-term memory problems, and impaired thinking and learning. Negative physical effects include... Read More

The largest increases in opioid-related deaths in Florida from 2014 to 2015 were from the following drugs: Buprenorphine (up 102 percent), heroin (up 74 percent), fentanyl (up 69 percent), codeine (up 57 percent), and Oxymorphone (up 42 percent).

“The facts of the accident included Mr. Siegler being the driver of a vehicle while under the influence of marijuana,” the Sheriff’s Office said in a press release. “He subsequently crossed the center lane of travel striking another oncoming vehicle.
Siegler was arrested at his home in rural Rochester and booked into the Thurston County Jail.
Siegler referenced the crash and apparent remorse in a June 30 post on his Facebook page, saying he wanted to pay his respects and that “... Read More

"We found no observational studies that met inclusion criteria, but a growing body of cross-sectional literature suggests negative opioid-related correlates among individuals who use cannabis and opioids concurrently. These include opioid misuse;... Read More

Abstract

Contemporary models of substance use disorders emphasize the role of cognitive control, which has been linked to difficulties in resisting the use of substances. In the present study, we measured two aspects of cognitive control, response inhibition (operationalized by a Go/NoGo Task) and performance monitoring (operationalized by an Eriksen Flanker Task), in a group of young cannabis-use disorder (CUD) patients and compared these functions with two control groups (i.e. a... Read More

Drug users now cause almost as many traffic deaths in Michigan as drunken drivers, a trend police blame on prescription drugs, the opioid epidemic and the easy availability of marijuana, medical and otherwise.
Over the past decade, fatal drunken-driving crashes across the state are down 36%, while those caused by people impaired by drugs have risen 263%.

They say they took their daughter to counseling, rehab summer camps, anything to help with her marijuana use and mental health struggles. The day before her overdose, she had passed two drug tests.  Her parents thought they had finally turned a corner.