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Dear Community Carer,
There’s an old saying, “never let a crisis go to waste.” No one has taken this statement more to heart than the marijuana industry.
As you will remember, last summer the marijuana industry found itself at the center of a public health crisis as thousands of people fell seriously ill and 60 subsequently died as a result of marijuana vaping.
How did the industry react? By using the crisis as a call to action for full federal legalization and commercialization.
Now, the marijuana industry is quickly moving to profit off of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
The industry is unleashing its army of lobbyists on state capitols, demanding governors designate pot shops as “essential” and suing those, such as Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, who refuse to bend to their demands.
The result of this: record sales and massive profits.
And while the state-level lobbyists and lawyers are busy working on governors, the industry’s federal lobbyists are demanding Congress include the industry in the next round of federal aid.
To be frank, demanding a federal bailout while you strong arm governors and subsequently brag about your massive increases in sales is disgusting.
I lay all this out in a piece in today’s New York Post, you can read it here.
Friend, we cannot allow Big Marijuana to trick Congress into handing them a massive taxpayer-funded bailout.
Millions of Americans are staring down unemployment, lost wages, and uncertainty about their future. And a whole host of healthcare workers are daily fighting the fight against this virus.
If anyone is deserving of federal aid, it are those who most need it – not an industry openly bragging about profits.
Thank you for all that you do,
Dr. Kevin Sabet
President & Co-Founder
Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM)
Smart Approaches to Marijuana | www.learnaboutsam.org
A VICTORY OVER MARIJUANA, A RALLY AND A MARCH
April 16th 2020
Parents Opposed to Pot enjoys a victory over the marijuana hype now that both major party candidates for the presidency oppose the legalization of marijuana. Neither former Vice-President Joe Biden nor President Trump support nationwide legalization.
It‘s a triumph of sorts, since nearly all the presidential candidates who dropped out are on record for supporting nationwide legalization. We’ll celebrate this fact and other triumphs at the Voices of Truth: A Rally for Victory over Marijuana on October 3. As a result of the COVID 19, we rescheduled our events from May to October 1 — 3. People from all over the country will attend the rally, culminating with a march to the Martin Luther King Memorial.
We’ll spend three days advocating for: safer highways; drug-free youth; safe and productive communities, and science-backed policy. Even lots of youths are coming on board to support us, and other anti-legalization groups will participate. Those who wish to attend will find more information at voicesoftruthrally.com or by writing [email protected].
Although most Democratic candidates embraced marijuana legalization in the primaries, it didn’t help their campaigns. A few years ago, Dan Riffle described support for marijuana legalization as “a mile wide and an inch deep.” Riffle is a former marijuana lobbyist and, more recently, a Congressional staffer.
Pollsters skew the polls in favor of legalization, because they don’t ask voters if they support decriminalization of marijuana, a policy quite different from legalization. Politicians who support legalization think it’s good gimmick to get the youth vote.
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Both the president and Joe Biden support states’ rights for marijuana, despite the widespread failure of this policy. No politician wants to face the wrath of the marijuana industry, which is brutal. Although Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez supports legalizing pot, she admits that it’s failed policy in terms of social justice.
Filmmaker Jane Wells, maker of Pot Luck: The Altered State of Colorado, believes Progressives should rethink the legalization of marijuana.
Perhaps, because of the coronavirus and concerns of death from vaping THC, the public will realize how foolish a policy of allowing some states to commercialize marijuana. Those states break federal law, and lawsuits to change federal law fail again and again.
For more Reclaim The Health of A Generation
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For Immediate Release: April 13, 2020
Voters in Anchorage, Alaska Overwhelmingly Defeat Marijuana Industry Push for \”Pot Bars\”
(Alexandria, Va) – In an election taking place last week, voters in Anchorage, Alaska overwhelmingly voted down a proposal that would have allowed for the on-site consumption of marijuana. The proposal failed by a margin of 64% to 35%.
Dr. Kevin Sabet, president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM) and a former senior drug policy advisor to the Obama Administration, released the following statement praising the results:
“People don’t want to expand the marijuana industry. On-site marijuana consumption has one of the biggest impacts on public safety of any policy shift and has been repeatedly rejected in many jurisdictions that have commercialized marijuana. The impairing effects of marijuana last beyond the sensation of being high. This proposal would have allowed pot shops to double as marijuana \’bars\’ and greatly increase the risk of individuals consuming highly potent strains of marijuana and then getting behind the wheel while impaired. We have seen drastic increases in drugged driving and marijuana-related traffic fatalities in states that have legalized. More must be done to prevent this unfortunate trend, not encourage it.
“Furthermore, we cannot allow the marijuana industry to trample laws put in place to limit the harms of secondhand smoke. In 2007, voters in Anchorage overwhelmingly approved a law to protect employees and the public from secondhand smoke and this was strengthened in 2013 to treat marijuana smoke the same as tobacco smoke. This proposal would have reversed these protections to bring back indoor smoking sections.
“The vote in opposition to this measure is encouraging and is only the latest in a string of setbacks for Big Pot. Across the nation, towns and municipalities are voting in support of measures restricting marijuana industry operations. These local control measures include banning on-site consumption, banning sales, delivery, and even growing operations. We are happy to support these efforts and through our ‘Towns and Cities Initiative,’ we work to have staff and resources available to assist local communities protect their neighborhoods from Big Pot.”
Stoners cheered when Canada legalised cannabis. How did it go so wrong?
The Observer Cannabis Growers have gone bust, and the black market is still thriving Mike Power Sun 5 Apr 2020
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The lights shone more brightly than anything I’d ever seen. One million blinding watts strafed across the leaves of countless cannabis plants that peeled off in neat rows in every direction. The warehouse was as pristine as a pharmaceutical facility, and as we strode around in crisp white nylon overalls and box-fresh wellies, the atmosphere was surreal — interstellar, almost: — it felt as if we were on a mission to Mars. It was definitely a glimpse of the future.
It was 2017 and I had been invited to visit this legal medical cannabis “grow” in the town of Gatineau, near Ottawa. I was in Canada after writing a paper for the drug-law reform thinktank Volteface, proposing an online-only, legal cannabis market in the UK as a way to break the logjam between the UK’s two million cannabis smokers and those who fear legalisation. I was meeting with Canadian police and politicians to hear more about that country’s plans to completely legalise cannabis the following year.
Back in the UK, a million-watt grow like Gatineau’s would put you in jail for a decade. Here, it was likely to make its owners a very cool, very legal few million in mere months. Added to that, the state would benefit, too, as taxes from sales of the crop would be collected for the common good rather than enriching criminals. It felt utopian.
Canada’s Cannabis Act of 2018 was a bold attempt to impose some order on this anarchic retail scene. It legalised the sale to adults of 30g of cannabis in austere packaging from government-licensed shops. Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau said: “The old approach to cannabis didn’t work. It was too easy for our kids to get it and gangs and drug dealers were reaping the profits. That changes from now on.”
Bill Blair, a former Toronto police chief, became an unlikely cheerleader for legalisation, arguing that to do so would “keep cannabis out of the hands of youth, and profits out of the hands of criminals”. Two other key goals of regulation were the protection of public health and the reduction in criminality associated with the illegal market. After 50 years of the unending, senseless drug war, peace had broken out.
Or so it seemed. Because while Canada may have lit the fuse on an ambitious experiment, every high has a low. Within a year the industry was experiencing mass layoffs, multi-billion-dollar stock-market losses, executive firings and corporate scandals as the overhyped new sector experienced a dramatic and humbling public correction.
Hype talks, but money walks. The early euphoria in the cannabis stock market has been replaced by a major dose of paranoia. All cannabis stocks have tanked, with an average 50% wipeout in value right across Canada and the US in the last year. Major players such as Aurora Cannabis took the biggest hit, with its shares falling from US$12.83 in March 2019 to US$2 today. Another bud behemoth, Tilray, has also had its share price slashed by 80%, from over US$81 to US$16 within a year. Other cannabis giants including Aphria lost 60% of their paper value in 2019, while Canopy Growth sank by 54%. Financing has dried up for the new industry, and small-scale retail investors — often young professionals investing via smartphone apps — have lost large sums of money. None of this is to assert that Canada’s policy has been a failure. If we compare it to the UK cannabis industry, where illegally trafficked children have been found enslaved in abandoned buildings growing cannabis for gangsters, it is better by several orders of magnitude.
What happens if you just legalise this drug? It’s a question no one other than Canada has ever really asked. My view is that we have long known that all drug laws are unworkable, illogical, unjustifiable, unscientific, counterproductive and generate countless unintended consequences — in fact, drugs laws often create the exact opposite outcomes to those desired. But ironically, and with a beautifully stoned logic, it turns out that legalising cannabis in Canada has generated just as many challenges as it solved.
Also see And Then There Were Three — Cannabis Markets That Is?
For complete article https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/apr/05/stoners-cheered-when-canada-legalised-cannabis-how-did-it-all-go-wrong
Smoking and coronavirus don’t mix
Apparently, Colorado has joined other states in determining that medical marijuana dispensaries are just as essential as pharmacies and food stores so that they are not required to close and can remain open and provide products to citizens who want them.
Around the state, we have witnessed long lines of people at dispensaries waiting to buy marijuana products.
My sincere hope is that dispensary staff members are following the message seriously that we should be supportive and kind to others and that they are educating and strongly encouraging clients to not smoke or vape the cannabis products they are purchasing.
There is a great deal of research demonstrating that smoking or vaping can significantly increase the risk of acquiring a viral infection and once someone is exposed to COVID19, smoking or vaping can make the consequences of the infection worse.
The National Academies of Sciences, Medicine and Engineering publication, “The Health Effects of Cannabis and Cannabinoids, 2017” reported that regular cannabis use was associated with airway injury, worsening respiratory symptoms and more frequent chronic bronchitis episodes.
Other studies have demonstrated that THC administration diminishes the immune response against the influenza virus and cannabis use can weaken the immune system, leading to pneumonia.
This is also true of smoking or vaping tobacco.
Data from China indicates that current or former smokers were 14 times more at risk of developing severe coronavirus infections and 14 percent more at risk for pneumonia than those who never smoked.
The fatality rate among those with confirmed coronavirus infections was 65 percent higher in men than women.
This correlates with the reports that 54 percent of men in China are current smokers compared to 3.4 percent of women.
Similar data is emerging from Korea and Italy. Recent CDC data indicate that nearly 40 percent of Americans hospitalized for COVID-19 are between the ages of 20 and 54 and it is believed that vaping may be driving the rise in young people hospitalized for corona virus.
This is very important information that people need to be aware of.
The risk is not just for the person smoking or vaping tobacco or marijuana. There also is increased risk for those experiencing secondhand exposures. Especially vaping puts the people exposed in a secondhand fashion at high risk.
If you watch people vaping, they normally disgorge a large cloud of vapor out around them that goes more than 6 feet.
If they are exposed, the virus will be in that cloud.
Then if they are vaping THC, the oily droplets fall on surfaces resulting in third hand exposure to the virus and THC.
Understanding these risks will help people be more protected.
This is an especially important time to encourage and help people to quit smoking and vaping.
The higher the THC potency of the marijuana product (bud or concentrated hash oil products) results in increased susceptibility to addiction to marijuana use and this makes it very difficult for many people to quit using.
The use of higher potency THC can also result in more consequences such as psychotic symptoms and cyclical vomiting.
There already was a significant increase in people with these symptoms coming into emergency departments in Colorado prior to COVID.
If people continue to come into emergency departments with these symptoms as a result of believing their ability to use marijuana is “essential,” they increase their own risk of exposure to the virus, as well as increasing the risk of passing that infection on to others.
Libby Stuyt, MD, Addiction Psychiatrist, Pueblo, Colorado
For complete story go Pueblo Chieftain
HOME-SCHOOL DRUG PREVENTION RESOURCES
Suddenly Homeschooling? Why not add a little drug prevention?
Many parents are facing the daunting task of teaching their children while they are home for an extended time. This week is National Drug and Alcohol Facts Week so the Drug Free America Foundation came up with a fun way to add drug prevention into your child’s curriculum.
They are suggesting that you add these games which are a fun way of conveying and testing your child’s knowledge.
Day 1
Play Kahoot! Marijuana Myths: Can You Tell Fact From Fiction?
Day 2
Take the National Drug & Alcohol IQ Challenge
Day 3
Play the Jeopardy-style interactive game: Drug Facts Challege!
Day 4
Take an exploration on Brain Power! to learn the effects of drugs on the body
Day 5
Have fun on social media by printing these fun “Not everyone’s doing it” cards and uploading a picture with your child holding these cards to brag how they are not engaging in drugs or alcohol! Make sure to include #NDAFW in your posts.
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SAM Announces Local Control Resource Center to Aid Nationwide Pushback on Marijuana Commercialization
(Alexandria, Va) – Today, Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), the leading national non-profit working to oppose the expansion and normalization of the commercial marijuana industry, announced the rollout of the second wave of its initiative aiding communities looking to exert local control by banning commercial marijuana operations.
“Our ‘Towns and Cities Initiative’ arms local communities with the resources they need to keep their neighborhoods free of marijuana shops and large scale growing operations that normalize this addiction-for-profit industry,” said Dr. Kevin Sabet, president of SAM and a former senior drug policy advisor to the Obama Administration. “People living in a state that has either ‘legalized’ pot or is considering it should know they have the power to organize against Big Pot. Our Local Control Resource Center provides all the information needed to successfully accomplish this.”
As a part of its efforts to contain the spread of Big Marijuana’s corporate agenda, SAM has long aided local communities in local control efforts. In Michigan, more than 1,400 communities have opted out of legalization thanks in part to the continued effort of SAM-affiliate Healthy and Productive Michigan.
Most recently, the Illinois community of Highland voted down a ballot referendum to overturn a local ban on marijuana shops. Notably, the effort in Highland was included as part of the initial rollout of SAM’s “Towns and Cities Initiative.”
As it stands, the vast majority of communities in California, Colorado, and Michigan have banned marijuana industry activity, including storefronts, growing operations, public consumption sites, and delivery services. Many of these communities have utilized SAM’s resources to accomplish this.
Resources available on SAM’s Local Control Resource Center include:
– SAM’s Local Control Toolkit: “Using Local Control to Push Back on the Marijuana Industry\”
– The comprehensive marijuana legalization impact report: “Lessons Learned from State Marijuana Legalization”
– Five comprehensive and easy to digest one-pager factsheets covering the effects of legalization in Colorado, the failures of the grand promises of sky-high marijuana revenues, the intersection of marijuana use and opioid abuse, and marijuana legalization’s social justice failures.
– Sample newspaper ads, mailers, and posters used from recent opt-out campaigns
for more go to https://learnaboutsam.org/
Tobacco cash behind cannabis research in Oxford
BMJ 2020; 368 (Published 18 March 2020) Cite this as: BMJ 2020;368:m1044
A research collaboration that includes Oxford University is taking funding from the tobacco industry for research into the medicinal properties of cannabis. Jonathan Gornall continues his investigation into the links between big business and the push to widen cannabis access for patients.
The BMJ has uncovered links between companies, campaign groups and individuals lobbying for wider patient access to cannabis for medical use and a parallel campaign to create a lucrative recreational market for the drug in the UK. The first article focused on the links between commercial organisations that are seeking new markets for recreational cannabis and patient groups and researchers.1 Here, we look at the involvement of the tobacco industry in funding research into medicinal cannabis, and the complex web of connections linked to both medicinal and recreational use of cannabis.
Gavin Sathianathan is typical of the new breed of cannabis entrepreneur. The 41 year old is founder and main shareholder of Alta Flora, a private limited London based company, incorporated in May 2018, specialising in “wellness products from natural sources.”2 He is also a trustee of the United Patients Alliance (UPA), a patient led medical cannabis support group founded in 2014 to “safeguard the patients’ voice in advancing legal access to cannabis therapeutics.”3 The alliance is also supporting Project Twenty21, which aims to recruit and prescribe cannabis to 20 000 patients to create “the largest body of evidence for the effectiveness and tolerability of medical cannabis … to demonstrate to policymakers that medical cannabis should be as widely available, and affordable, as other approved medicines.”4
Another of Sathianathan’s recent roles was as chief executive of Forma Holdings, a cannabis investment fund launched in 2016 with offices in London and Los Angeles. Together with Neil Mahapatra, a contact from his student days at Harvard who is a managing partner at London based private equity and venture capital firm Kingsley Capital Partners, Sathianathan is also a co-founder and director of Oxford Cannabinoid Technologies.
In 2017 Kingsley announced that it was founding Oxford Cannabinoid Technologies and, in collaboration with Oxford University, investing up to £10m (€11m; $13m) in a “ground-breaking cannabinoid biomedicine research programme … to investigate the role of cannabinoids in biology and medicine” and develop “safe and effective prescription medicines to treat serious and life-threatening human diseases and conditions,” including cancer, pain, neurological conditions, and autoimmune and autoinflammatory diseases.5
But in June 2018 Oxford Cannabinoid Technologies announced it had attracted total additional funding of about $10m from two potentially controversial sources with investment interests that are not limited to the medicinal cannabis market.
One was Casa Verde Capital, a US venture capital firm co-founded in 2015 by Snoop Dogg, the US rap artist and high profile exponent of recreational cannabis use. 6 Casa Verde is focused exclusively on cannabis which, it believes, “will be among the most compelling investment themes of our generation.”7
The identity of the other investor–tobacco company Imperial Brands (formerly Imperial Tobacco)–will ring alarm bells in the public health community. In a press release in July 2018 announcing it was taking an equity stake in Oxford Cannabinoid Technologies, Imperial’s chief development officer, Matthew Phillips, said cannabinoid products had “significant potential and our investment enables Imperial to support OCT’s important research while building a deeper understanding of the medical cannabis market.”
Recreational market
Asked by The BMJ whether it had any plans to invest in any future recreational cannabis market in the UK, a spokesperson for Imperial dismissed this as “a hypothetical question.” He added: “Recreational cannabis is not legal in the UK and we have no plans. Any potential for changes to its legal status is a matter for the government, and we don’t have a view on this.”
A spokesperson for Oxford Cannabinoid Technologies told The BMJ that the company “would not look to enter the recreational market” should restrictions in the UK be eased. But he added: “It is worth noting that while neither [co-founder] Neil [Mahapatra] nor OCT advocate in support of recreational cannabis … Kingsley Capital Partners has founded other businesses that are active in the cannabinoid market.”
However, in an interview in the Times newspaper in 2018 Mahapatra dismissed criticism of a healthcare company accepting money from a tobacco firm. “From my perspective,” he was quoted as saying, “any money that’s not going into developing cigarettes and is going into good things, such as research that could help people, is great.” The medical arguments for cannabis, he added, were “overwhelming or, at least, have the potential to be overwhelming.” He added he was “50/50” on whether cannabis should be legalised for recreational use.8
Marta Di Forti, a psychiatrist at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London, who last year published research on the relation between cannabis use and psychotic disorder,9 called for more independent funding for cannabis research.
“It is always very dangerous to forget history and we are now seeing the sort of connections that we have seen happening before,” she said–and the involvement of tobacco company Imperial was “dreadful and shocking.”
“We are lacking in funding for cannabis research from independent organisations such as the Wellcome Trust or the Medical Research Council. The result will be that more and more you are going to see even prestigious and reputable academic institutions accepting money from some of these companies.”
For complete story https://www.bmj.com/content/368/bmj.m1044