|
medical marijuana millionaires and their cash will remain as gray and transitory as a cloud from a bong wafting down Haight Street. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/01/us/01sfmetro.html
<br />
<br />31 Medical marijuana, meet e-commerce By Geoff Williams, contributing writer /January 12, 2010 (CNNMoney.com) --Entrepreneur John Lee thinks the pot business is ready for its own Amazon.com.
<br />The numbers back him up. Marijuana is California's biggest cash crop, generating sales estimated at $14 billion a year. Thanks to the state's increasingly liberal medical marijuana laws,
<br />more of that money than ever before is being spent legally. Which leaves sellers with new challenges: Taxes. Invoices. Supply chain management. Regulatory compliance. Enter PlainView
<br />Systems, a four-month-old Sonoma startup that aims to bring sophisticated business management tools to an industry that has only recently begun operating like one. "It's a business where
<br />everyone is very, very paranoid," Lee says. PlainView's "compassionate care marketplace" is a business-to-business exchange for licensed providers of medical marijuana and their patients.
<br />Participants can band together to form growing collectives --a legal requirement for those that want to sell pot --and cut deals with other members to buy and sell their inventory. The
<br />system also helps users sellers keep their records in order, generating invoices, sales reports and tax paperwork. Evan, who asked that his last name not be used, is one of the site's
<br />early clients. Now 23, he's been growing cannabis and supplying it to a dispensary since he was 18 --when it became legal for him to do so, he is very careful to say. He uses PlainView
<br />to invoice his buyers and order seeds and fertilizer for his crop. "I'm just a small-time grower," Evan says. "Anytime I have extra, I can sell it to [a dispensary] for $2,000 to $4,000."
<br />Actually, even the word "selling" is a legal no-no with the dispensary that Evan works with. "They're 'reimbursing you for your time,' that's how they like you to say it," he says. That
<br />semantic footsie is a sign of how California is approaching its controversial crawl toward de facto pot legalization: By burying it in red tape. Local municipalities have drawn up a
<br />a thicket of regulations specifying how, and how much, cannabis each individual merchant can grow, transport and sell. For Lee, that blizzard of bureaucracy is a business opportunity.
<br />It means sellers will need help keeping their paperwork straight. "Just in the state of California alone, according to my calculations, medical cannabis is a $200 million market," Lee
<br />estimates. "As that market grows, we want to have a small but significant part of." But the formerly underground industry isn't exactly scrambling to shape up and fly straight. Four
<br />California dispensaries didn't return calls and e-mails seeking comment on PlainView Systems' business model. "A lot of them are still on the edge of the law and may not want the publicity,"
<br />theorizes Andy Cookston……Every step creates more potential clients for PlainView. Lee still gets the jokes from friends --"So, you're a pot dealer now?" "Not exactly," he responds. "I
<br />don't touch any of the material. I'm not part of the transaction." But if all goes as planned, he he intends to be part of a multi-million dollar solution. http://money.cnn.com/2010/01/12/smallbusine
<br />ss/plainview_marijuana_marketplace/IGrow: Walmart of weed opens in Oakland Matthai Kuruvila, Chronicle Staff Writer /Thursday, January 28, 2010 Call it the Walmart of weed. In a 15,000-square-foot
<br />warehouse just down the road from the Oakland Airport, an entrepreneur is opening a one-stop shop for medicinal marijuana cultivation that's believed to be the largest in the state.
<br />Don't know the first thing about growing pot? The folks at iGrow have a doctor on site to get you a cannabis card and sell you all the necessary equipment for indoor, hydroponic cultivation
<br />-from pumps, nutrients and tubing to lights and fans. Don't know how to set it up? For a fee, on-site technicians will show you how to build it in your home and even maintain it weekly.
<br />"A lot of people don't know much about growing pot," said Dhar Mann, 25, the owner, who stood in front of an array of Ikea-like displays, showing different rooms of cannabis cultivation
<br />systems. "Since there are no full-service resources like us, they take risks, like electrical fires." This is hardly a fringe business. When iGrow opens today, at least three City Council
<br />members will attend. So will most of the leaders of the cannabis industry in Oakland, a city long at the vanguard of medicinal marijuana. Today's opening also comes on a key day for
<br />proponents of a statewide ballot measure to allow recreational marijuana. They plan to turn in about twice as many signatures as needed to qualify the
<br />32 measure for the November ballot. The supporters of that measure are being led by Richard Lee, owner of Oaksterdam University, an Oakland-based business that trains people for work
<br />in the cannabis industry. The medicinal marijuana world is still unsettled. Cities from Los Angeles to Berkeley are grappling with how to permit and regulate medical marijuana dispensaries.
<br />Oakland, where voters last summer agreed to have the city to tax and regulate "cannabis businesses," has allowed only four licensed dispensaries. Though iGrow provides all the supplies
<br />and know-how for cannabis cultivation, they don't sell the seedlings -only dispensaries can. And even some of the vendors tread a delicate line. Gabriel Goodhart, the owner of Easy Feed
<br />Systems based in West Oakland, was setting up one of the system displays at iGrow on Wednesday. His company has an explicit policy of not setting up any system where marijuana is visible
<br />when they show up -or even mentioning the word "marijuana." "Liability is shifting," said Goodhart, a libertarian who is a registered Republican. "A small business like ours can't take
<br />the risk." But, he believes, the issue is a moral one. "It's not fair to medical patients to put them in a gray area where they have to be involved in criminal activity to stay healthy,"
<br />he said. "That's like not having health insurance." The cost of creating your own cultivation system or relying solely on a dispensary is vast. At a dispensary, a patient might spend
<br />$120 a week for a quarter-ounce of marijuana. However, it might cost $1,000 to set up an eight-plant system, said Zeta Ceti, one of iGrow's "indoor growing technicians." But in the course
<br />of a year, they might only use half of their harvest and be able to sell the remaining 3 pounds for $12,000 to a dispensary. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/01/27/BA4T1BOGCV.DTL
<br />Walnut Creek construction firm eager to build canna-business Written on February 8, 2010 at 11:46 AM by Bud Medical marijuana superstore? Check. Pot legalization ballot? Check. Custom-made
<br />grow room? Check. At least since January. That is when the owners of Good Green Builders became what may be the first construction company in California, and the nation, aimed at the
<br />medical cannabis industry. (Angela Woodall’s article in the Oakland Tribune appears here sans hyperlink to the story’s subject.) Good Green Builders will make hydroponic grow rooms for
<br />the cultivation of nonsmokeable crops, from orchids to tomatoes. But William McKenzie, Brian Mitchell and Brett McCormick decided the time was right to piggyback on the profit potential
<br />of medical marijuana…..The trio’s office is in Walnut Creek but their target market is Oakland, the industry’s Bay Area epicenter even though the number of outlets is small compared
<br />with many other cities. Good Green Builders “could be a million-dollar business in the next year. There are an infinite number of customers out there,” said McKenzie, a licensed contractor
<br />with a background in agriculture business who also runs a Bay Area painting company…..Before January, the trio had already built about 30 grow rooms, from a $6,000 job converting a basement
<br />into a grow room with two lights to the $30,000 conversion of a three-car garage in the Oakland hills that involved lights, reservoirs, pumps, timers exhaust fans, tables and carbon
<br />scrubbers to take the odor out of the room…..“It takes someone who knows what they’re doing,” he said. “There are so many mistakes that can be made on the electrical side. Any fool can
<br />just run a couple of wires.” http://calpotnews.com/cultivation/walnut-creek-construction-firm-eager-to-build-canna-business/During this quarter, a study was published which indicated
<br />an increase in use of marijuana by teens. This importance of this increase is magnified by the findings of a recent medical study which asserts that the use of marijuana by adolescents
<br />causes irreversible effects on the brain and that those effects were more profound than previously thought. At the same time, mental health professionals are speaking out about the affects
<br />of marijuana usage on their younger patients.
<br />33 Alcohol and marijuana use among teens is on the rise, ending a decade-long decline, a study being released Tuesday found. (CBS/AP) /March 2, 2010 "I'm a little worried that we may
<br />be seeing the leading edge of a trend here," said Sean Clarkin, director of strategy at The Partnership for a Drug-Free America, which was releasing the study. "Historically, you do
<br />see the increase in recreational drugs before you see increases in some of the harder drugs." The annual survey found the number of teens in grades 9 through 12 who reported drinking
<br />alcohol in the last month rose 11 percent last year, with 39 percent — about 6.5 million teens — reporting alcohol use. That's up from 35 percent, or about 5.8 million teens, in 2008.
<br />For pot, 25 percent of teens reported smoking marijuana in the last month, up from 19 percent. CBSNews.com Special Report: Marijuana Nation: Until last year, those measures for pot and
<br />alcohol use had been on a steady decline since 1998, when use hovered around 50 percent of teens for alcohol and 27 percent for pot. The study also found use of the party drug Ecstasy
<br />on the rise. Six percent of teens surveyed said they used Ecstasy in the past month, compared with 4 percent in 2008. Meanwhile, a separate study in Australia found a possible link between
<br />long-term marijuana use and increased risk of hallucinations, delusions and other psychoses among young people. According to the findings, published Monday in the journal Archives of
<br />General Psychiatry, those who reported smoking marijuana for six or more years were twice as likely to develop a psychosis, such as schizophrenia, and four times as likely to get high
<br />scores in clinical tests of delusion. If parents suspect their teen is using, they need to act quickly, Clarkin said. Monitor them more closely, talk with them about drugs, set rules
<br />and consult outside help, like a counselor, doctor, clergy or other resource, he said. The researchers asked teens how they felt about doing drugs or friends who did them. The study
<br />found a higher percentage of teens than in the previous year agreed that being high feels good; more teens reported having friends who usually get high at parties; and fewer teens said
<br />they wouldn't want to hang around kids who smoked pot. Stacy Laskin, now 21 and a senior in college, said marijuana was everywhere during her high school years. Laskin said she tried
<br />pot and drank alcohol in high school, but didn't make it a habit like other kids she knew. "The behavior I saw people go through — and to see how far people can fall — really turned
<br />me away more than anything else," Laskin said in an interview with The Associated Press. Her close friend from high school died in 2008 from a heroin overdose. Laskin, a psychology major
<br />at Salisbury University in Maryland, was so torn by her friend Jeremy's death that she decided to help others and is working on her second internship at a drug treatment center. "Just
<br />seeing the negative impact made me want to get involved," she said. Other findings: • Teen abuse of prescription drugs and over-the-counter cough medicine remained stable from 2008 to
<br />2009. About 1 in 7 teens reported abusing a prescription pain reliever in the past year; and about 8 percent of the teens questioned reported over-the-counter cough medicine abuse in
<br />the past year. • Teen steroid and heroin use remained low at 5 percent for lifetime use. The Partnership's "attitude tracking" study was sponsored by MetLife Foundation. Researchers
<br />surveyed 3,287 teens in grades 9 through 12. Data were collected from questionnaires that teens filled out anonymously from March to June 2009. The study has a margin of error of plus
<br />or minus 2.3 percentage points. The New York-based Partnership is a nonprofit group working to reduce the use of illicit drugs. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/02/health/main6258459.shtml
<br />Marijuana and Psychosis: New Evidence Reported March 4, 2010 (Ivanhoe Newswire) --New insight into the link between marijuana use and psychosis shows the younger one starts using, the
<br />higher the likelihood of losing touch with reality. New research out of the University of Queensland in Australia shows compared to people who had never used cannabis, young adults who
<br />started using cannabis six or seven years before the study were twice as likely to develop a non-affective psychosis like schizophrenia and four times as likely to have high scores on
<br />a test
<br />34 measuring delusion. In addition, the study found the longer the span of time since a person first used cannabis, the higher their risk of psychosis-related problems. The relationship
<br />between cannabis use and psychotic problems was shown to be persistent among sibling pairs, "reducing the likelihood that the association was due to unmeasured shared genetic and/or
<br />environmental influences," study authors wrote. Researchers caution that the relationship between psychosis and cannabis is a complex one, since individuals who experience hallucinations
<br />and thus are at higher risk for psychosis are more likely to use cannabis longer and more frequently. Source: Archives of General Psychiatry, posted online March 1, 2010 http://www.ivanhoe.com/channe
<br />ls/p_channelstory.cfm?storyid=23723 Marijuana Use and a Chance of Increased Psychosis Health and Wellness by Linda Evans /February 28th, 2010 Marijuana Use and a Chance of Increased
<br />Psychosis. A study that was released on Saturday indicates a link between increased psychosis risk and pot usage. Cannabis has long been a recreational drug of choice, and there are
<br />many advocates who have been pushing for medical marijuana laws. On the other hand, the popular drug has many enemies that lobby strongly to keep the use of marijuana illegal. It’s important
<br />to note that pot is illegal in the United States. Even if a state allows medical marijuana use, the Federal laws indicate that such usage is illegal. Researchers have been studying the
<br />effects of marijuana use on the brain. They recently completed a study of 3,100 young adults averaging 20 years in age. Of the group, 14% admitted to smoking pot for five years or more,
<br />16% admitted to using marijuana for four to five years, and 18% admitted use of the drug for 3 years or less. Out of the group, 65 had been diagnosed with mental illnesses such as schizophrenia,
<br />and 233 have had at least one instance of hallucinations. The results of the study are interesting. It was noted that “Compared with those who had never used cannabis, young adults who
<br />had six or more years since first use of cannabis were twice as likely to develop a non-affective psychosis and were four times as likely to have high scores on the Peters et al Delusions
<br />Inventory.” So, using marijuana causes mental illness? It’s not that simple. On the other hand, the study indicated that “those individuals who were vulnerable to psychosis were more
<br />likely to commence cannabis use, which could then subsequently contribute to an increased risk of conversion to a non-affective psychotic disorder.” This means that the marijuana-psychosis
<br />link falls within the proverbial question “which came first-the chicken or the egg.” Researchers noted that more research was needed to draw conclusions over whether or not cannabis
<br />usage causes mental illness. If a link from marijuana use to mental illness can be proven – that is, if researchers can conclude successfully that pot usage increases the risk of developing
<br />mental illness – you can expect some pretty strong arguments against medical medical marijuana use legislation. http://cnmnewsnetwork.com/11344/marijuana-use-and-a-chance-of-increased-psychosis/Psych
<br />iatrists want controls on medical marijuana Susan Kimball, Reporter /02/02/2010 AUGUSTA, Maine (NEWS CENTER) --Members of the Maine Association of Psychiatric Physicians are asking lawmakers
<br />to put strict controls in place in regard to children under Maine's new medical marijuana law. Dr. James Maier, of the PIER Program at Maine Medical Center, says the Association is asking
<br />that specialists review all cases involving children and that medical marijuana be given only to children with a terminal illness. Maier says that new research shows there are great
<br />risks posed by marijuana to the developing brains of children. Those risks include addiction and psychosis. "If we can reduce that risk in those vulnerable children by not throwing the
<br />door wide open for kids using so called medical marijuana for a lot of indications that are questionable we'll probably save a lot of harm. California is now trying to put the brakes
<br />on because they've opened Pandora's box by making so called medical marijuana so widely available," says Maier. http://www.wcsh6.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=114062&catid=2
<br />35 Doctor Says Medical Marijuana Laws Hurt Teens February 10, 2010 Colorado is one of more than a dozen states to legalize medical marijuana. Denver psychiatrist Christian Thurstone
<br />argues that the state's relaxed laws have made the drug widely available — and irresistible — to too many adolescents NEAL CONAN, host: And now the dark side of medical marijuana laws.
<br />Pot is legal in more than a dozen states if you have permission from a doctor. Federal law continues to ban marijuana as a controlled substance. But last year the Obama administration
<br />announced it would not prosecute users who comply with state laws. Those laws vary from state to state. But in Colorado patients with one of several conditions, cancer or AIDS, for example,
<br />can legally smoke pot. Dr. Christian Thurstone is a psychiatrist in Denver who specializes in adolescent substance abuse. He argues that the medical marijuana laws are a mess and says
<br />that kids messed up on marijuana come in to his office every day. Dr. Christian Thurstone, medical director of the adolescent substance abuse program at Denver Health, joins us now from
<br />a studio at member station KUVO in Denver. Thanks very much for coming in today. Dr. CHRISTIAN THURSTONE (Adolescent Substance Abuse Program, Denver Health): Thank you for having me.
<br />CONAN: And you wrote that the way the law works in Colorado, it's just a backdoor to legalize marijuana. Dr. THURSTONE: Yes, I did. That seems to be what I'm seeing. CONAN: And how does
<br />that work? Dr. THURSTONE: Well, so I'm the medical director of an adolescent substance abuse program, and we noticed in 2009 at the beginning of the year that we were not very busy,
<br />and at the end of the year we ended up having probably tripled our referrals to the adolescent substance abuse treatment program. And 95 percent of our referrals are for marijuana. And
<br />we started seeing teenagers talk to us about how they would get marijuana from their relatives and from their friends. And then they started talking to us about how the -how they could
<br />get medical grade marijuana on the streets and how the potency seemed to be increasing. And then we started seeing patients and adolescents come in to see us and talk to us about how
<br />marijuana was their medicine and it would help them with their anger and their other problems that they would have, such as stress and anxiety. And then we started having patients show
<br />up with their medical marijuana license. And that's when one of the students that I work with said, you know, Dr. Thurstone, you really need to do something about this. You can't just
<br />keep complaining to us about it. You have to actually do something now. And so that's when I wrote the piece that I did for the Denver Post. CONAN: And you argued in that piece that
<br />essentially for the $300 referral by any doctor, well, for any number of conditions, almost anybody can get a marijuana prescription. Dr. THURSTONE: Yes. So, for example, I have a number
<br />of patients now who have their medical marijuana license. And the way they have described the process to me is as follows -that they can go into a medical marijuana doctor, and it's
<br />easy to find a list of those doctors online or in the newspaper. And then they have about a 15-minute visit, they pay about $300, and they complain -I had some patients complain of depression,
<br />some of anxiety, some of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder or ADHD, and the doctor asks them, well, does marijuana help with that? And my patients say yes, it does help with that.
<br />And then they came out with their medical marijuana recommendation. And in no case did any of the providing physicians call me or insist on a psychiatric consultation, and the doctors
<br />also do not have an ongoing relationship with my patients. So... CONAN: So this is a prescription mill, is what you're talking about.
<br />36 Dr. THURSTONE: It's a prescription mill. And we know that here in Denver that these physicians can practice within a medical marijuana dispensary, so you can go directly to the dispensary.
<br />It's really onestop shopping. You go to the dispensary, you meet with the physician briefly, and then you can go over to the dispensary and get your medical marijuana, and then out you
<br />go. CONAN: One-stop shopping. And there are a lot of people who are going to say, well, come on, it's just marijuana. It's just pot. Come on, get serious. Dr. THURSTONE: Yeah. So I do
<br />hear that all the time. I hear, well, marijuana is not as bad as alcohol or not as bad as tobacco. And I think -I'm not -you know, I don't know how to compare the substances. But I do
<br />know that for adolescents, marijuana can be very harmful. We know that about one in six adolescents who tries marijuana as an adolescent then goes on to develop what we call a cannabis
<br />use disorder. We know that marijuana use in adolescence is associated with accidents, risky sexual behaviors that can lead to sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV. We know that
<br />adolescents who use marijuana are more likely to drop out of school, more likely to get pregnant. It's associated with a whole host of problems. We also know that in adolescence you
<br />have a developing brain. CONAN: Mm-hmm. Dr. THURSTONE: We know that the brain is really developing quickly during adolescent years, and so, using a toxic substance during those years
<br />can be quite damaging and produce possibly permanent deficits in memory, as well as how the brain is ends up being structured. CONAN: Well, one of the problems with statements like that
<br />is there's the lack of research. We simple don't know a lot of the answers to some of the questions that you just raised. But nevertheless, those problems, at least, some of them do
<br />exist. I was interested that some of your patients said to you, Doctor, how can marijuana be bad for me, it's medicine? Dr. THURSTONE: Yeah. Exactly. So I go to schools and do some prevention
<br />programs, frequently. And then I also I see my patients in the program, and I hear all the time, Doctor, marijuana is a medicine, how can it be bad for me? And, well, so we're also seeing
<br />-that's another interesting thing. We're seeing a big shift in attitudes here that adolescents have about marijuana. CONAN: Oh, and by the way, you said, they started to really -accelerating
<br />in 2009. Colorado has had the medical marijuana law for a number of years. Dr. THURSTONE: Correct. Exactly. So have we've had it since 2000. But then I think, you know, it's my understanding
<br />that the Obama administration saying that they will not prosecute people who get their medical marijuana in states where that have medical marijuana laws, really opened the door for
<br />opened a floodgate for us to have all these dispensaries and all these people with licenses. CONAN: Mm-hmm. Dr. THURSTONE: So for example, we know that in Colorado now, there are about
<br />60,000 people, according to The Denver Post, who have medical marijuana licenses. And we have over 400 dispensaries of medical marijuana in Denver alone now. Which means that we have
<br />more dispensaries than we have Starbucks. We have more dispensaries than we have liquor stores. We have more dispensaries than we have schools. And so in 2009 we really saw the floodgates
<br />open up. CONAN: Let's get some callers in on our conversation. We're talking with Dr. Christian Thurstone, a board certified child, adolescent, and addiction psychiatrist in Denver,
<br />Colorado.…… Dr. THURSTONE: Yes, so we know that from prevention science, we know that teens are most likely to use things that are A, available and B, for which there is low perceived
<br />harmfulness. So as medical marijuana becomes more and more available, youll see teenagers using it more and more, and were already seeing abuse and diversion(ph) of that. And youll see
<br />the perceived harmfulness. So, how harmful they think it is to use marijuana regularly, thats going down. And I -my own personal opinion is I would attribute some of that to the fact
<br />that its viewed as a medicine now, and that that will lead to increased use among teenagers. CONAN: Lets go to Dawn(ph). Dawn with us from Pontiac, Michigan. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.
<br />php?storyId=123570215
<br />37 Marijuana not a good choice as medicine By Dr. Terry Gaff /Sunday, 21 March 2010 In my work as an emergency physician and as a county coroner, I frequently order tests to determine
<br />whether a person has illicit drugs in their blood or urine. While I am not naïve enough to think that all people will turn out to be clean and sober, I am amazed at how many people have
<br />a positive test for cannabinoids, which are the active ingredients in marijuana (Cannabis sativa). I recognize that there are some legitimate medical uses for cannabinoids. However,
<br />the people with the positive tests are generally not suffering from nausea, vomiting, pain, loss of appetite, asthma, glaucoma, nor spasticity. They have been consuming marijuana for
<br />other reasons. Although 14 states in the U.S. (Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington)
<br />now permit, or soon will permit, some medical use of marijuana, Indiana still does not recognize it for legal medical use. In some states, by prescription, licensed facilities dispense
<br />marijuana grown in controlled settings. In others, limited self-cultivation (grow your own) is permitted for medical use. Nationally, the marijuana plant itself is a Drug Enforcement
<br />Agency (DEA) schedule I controlled substance (high abuse potential with no legitimate medical use).However, it may be both eaten and smoked to relieve nausea, vomiting and pain and to
<br />treat many other ailments as noted above. It appears to be fairly effective, depending on the dose, for some of these disorders. But there are no really good studies large enough and
<br />standardized enough to be convincing. On the other hand, two cannabinoid-like drugs, dronabinol (Marinol) and nabilone (Cesamet), have been FDAapproved since 1985. Both of these drugs
<br />are effective for prevention and treatment of nausea and vomiting due to mild or moderate side effects of anticancer drugs. However, they are less effective with the more severe side
<br />effects of drugs such as cisplatin, where other available drugs such as ondansetron (Zofran, and others) and aprepitant (Emend) appear to be more effective and better tolerated. There
<br />is even a drug to spray in the mouth called Nabiximols (Sativex), which is a liquid extract containing constituents of marijuana. This is approved in Canada for treatment of central
<br />nervous system pain in multiple sclerosis (MS). It is also in phase III trials in the U.S. for.treatment of uncontrollable cancer pain. A small study in healthy young adults of the effects
<br />of active chemicals from marijuana on sleep found no significant effect on the ability to fall asleep, length of time sleeping, or the quality of sleep. Subjects who took only one of
<br />the components called tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) reported difficulty with memory the next morning. Although death from acute overdose of marijuana
|