Tag: Can't Stop Using Cannabis?

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CAL AMSTERDAM – California Sees Mass Legal Cannabis Exodus – Jerry Garcia’s Grateful Dead cannabis brand is leaving California

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Jerry Garcia is one of the most iconic pot smokers in California history. Born in San Francisco, Garcia led the Grateful Dead for 30 years as the city became an international beacon of counterculture, and he did it all while casually and openly smoking weed. His pot pipe is considered an artifact of California cannabis history.

But even the iconic Jerry Garcia name couldn’t survive California’s turbulent legal pot market.

The Garcia Hand Picked brand, launched by the deceased musician’s family in 2020, has pulled out of the state, a spokesperson confirmed to SFGATE. Garcia’s exit comes as cannabis insiders predict a “mass extinction event” for California’s pot industry, with thousands of companies expected to go out of business this year.

Andrew DeAngelo, a cannabis consultant and former owner of Harborside, one of the state’s pioneering medical cannabis dispensaries, said the Garcia brand probably learned the same thing that all of California’s pot companies have realized: “You can’t make any money in this market.”

“Not only is Garcia leaving, a lot of people are leaving,” DeAngelo told SFGATE. “It’s a real shame that California is losing out. We’re losing out on jobs and economic activity and other places are benefiting from that.”

Garcia Hand Picked, like most celebrity brands, contracted out its cannabis growing and manufacturing to partner companies and then stamped Jerry Garcia’s face on the packaging. The company said they are looking for a new cannabis supplier, but declined to be interviewed for this story and did not elaborate on how long the brand would be on hiatus in California. Garcia Hand Picked is still available in five other states.

“We’re taking a pause in California. We want to ensure CA consumers have the highest quality flower for the long term, so we are in the process of choosing a new local partner for cultivation, production, sales and distribution of Garcia Hand Picked in CA,” a spokesperson from Holistic Industries, the brand’s parent company, said in an email to SFGATE.

California’s cannabis industry has faced huge economic hurdles in its first four years of legal sales. The state’s complicated cannabis regulations and high taxes add costs to legal operators, while widespread illegal farms and retailers undercuts legitimate companies. Limited access to banking means these companies pay exorbitant fees for simple banking services and have almost no access to loans. Federal law blocks pot companies from deducting most business taxes from their federal taxes, making pot businesses pay an effective federal tax rate as high as 80%.

These factors have come together to make California a painful place to run a legal pot business. The majority of small legacy cannabis farms are on their way out of business and even the country’s biggest cannabis companies are leaving the state.

Nearly a dozen states had legalized cannabis by the time Jerry Garcia’s surviving family members decided to start a pot brand built around the Grateful Dead frontman, who died of a heart attack in 1995. But the Garcias chose to launch their brand in California, the same place that Jerry was born, spearheaded an artistic movement, and died.

The Golden State featured prominently in that initial launch. An airstream painted with swirling psychedelic colors crisscrossed the state in late 2020 announcing the new brand. Esquire profiled the family as they smoked a bong in Oakland and asked, “If Jerry Garcia were a kind of weed, what would the high feel like?” The family told Esquire they were planning on opening a Jerry Garcia-themed cannabis consumption lounge at a dispensary in San Francisco, which never materialized.

Nearly a dozen states had legalized cannabis by the time Jerry Garcia’s surviving family members decided to start a pot brand built around the Grateful Dead frontman, who died of a heart attack in 1995. But the Garcias chose to launch their brand in California, the same place that Jerry was born, spearheaded an artistic movement, and died.

The Golden State featured prominently in that initial launch. An airstream painted with swirling psychedelic colors crisscrossed the state in late 2020 announcing the new brand. Esquire profiled the family as they smoked a bong in Oakland and asked, “If Jerry Garcia were a kind of weed, what would the high feel like?” The family told Esquire they were planning on opening a Jerry Garcia-themed cannabis consumption lounge at a dispensary in San Francisco, which never materialized.

The Garcia brand’s departure is also a sign that customers could be getting tired of celebrity pot brands. There are so many famous people selling weed that even the rock stars are noticing that it might not be an easy business to get into: David Crosby told the Los Angeles Times last year that he wanted to start his own pot brand but said, “Celebrity brands didn’t turn out to work nearly as well as anyone thought they were gunna.”

Indeed, Garcia Hand Picked isn’t even the first Grateful Dead pot brand. Drummer Mickey Hart launched his own pre-rolled joint brand called Mind your Head in 2019, although that brand also appears to be on hiatus. Its website is down and a brand representative could be contacted for this story.

Garcia Hand Picked and Mind Your Head could come back to the state, but for now, Deadheads in California will have to get by without smoking any cannabis blessed by the legendary band.

https://www.sfgate.com/cannabis/article/jerry-garcia-cannabis-leaving-california-17741843.php

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CAL AMSTERDAM – Weed users nearly 25% more likely to need emergency care and hospitalization “Our study demonstrates that the use of this substance is associated with serious negative outcomes, specifically, ED emergency department visits and hospitalizations” 1-800-662-HELP

(CNN) Using recreational marijuana is associated with a higher risk of emergency room care and being hospitalized for any reason, a new study has found.

“Cannabis use is not as benign and safe as some might think,” said study author Nicholas Vozoris, assistant professor and clinician investigator in the division of respirology at the department of medicine at the University of Toronto.

“Our study demonstrates that the use of this substance is associated with serious negative outcomes, specifically, ED (emergency department) visits and hospitalizations,” Vozoris said in an email.

Significant risk of hospitalization.

The study, published Monday in the journal BMJ Open Respiratory Research, looked at national health records data for over 30,000 Ontario, Canada, residents between the ages of 12 and 65 over a six-year period.

When compared with people who did not use marijuana, cannabis users were 22% more likely to visit an emergency department or be hospitalized, the study revealed.

Respiratory problems from smoking weed was the second leading reason users seek emergency care, the study found.

The finding held true even after adjusting the analysis for over 30 other confounding factors, including other illicit drug use, alcohol use and tobacco smoking.

“Physical bodily injury was the leading cause of emergency department visits and hospitalizations among the cannabis users, with respiratory reasons coming in a close second,” Vozoris said.

Marijuana smokers had higher blood and urine levels of several smoke-related toxins such as naphthalene, acrylamide and acrylonitrile than nonsmokers, a 2021 study found. Naphthalene is associated with anemia, liver and neurological damage, while acrylamide and acrylonitrile have been associated with cancer and other health issues.

Another study done last year found teenagers were about twice as likely to report “wheezing or whistling” in the chest after vaping marijuana than after smoking cigarettes or using e-cigarettes.

Growing body of research.

A number of studies have shown an association between marijuana use and injury, both physical and mental.

Marijuana may make sleep worse, especially for regular users, study finds

Heavy use of marijuana by teens and young adults with mood disorders — such as depression and bipolar disorder — has been linked to an increased risk of self-harm, suicide attempts and death, according to a 2021 study.

Another 2021 study found habitual users of cannabis, including teenagers, are increasingly showing up in emergency rooms complaining of severe intestinal distress that’s known as “cannabis hyperemesis syndrome,” or CHS.

The condition causes nausea, severe abdominal pain and prolonged vomiting “which can go on for hours,” Dr. Sam Wang, a pediatric emergency medicine specialist and toxicologist at Children’s Hospital Colorado, told CNN in a prior interview.

A review published earlier this year looked at studies on over 43,000 people and found a negative impact of tetrahydrocannabinol or THC, the main psychoactive compound in cannabis, on the brain’s higher levels of thinking.

For youth, this impact may “consequently lead to reduced educational attainment, and, in adults, to poor work performance and dangerous driving. These consequences may be worse in regular and heavy users,” coauthor Dr. Alexandre Dumais, associate clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Montreal told CNN in a prior interview.

At a time when “health care systems are already stretched thin around the world following the Covid pandemic and with difficult economic times … cannabis use is on the rise around the world,” Vozoris said.

“Our study results should set off ‘alarm bells’ in the minds of the public, health care professionals, and political leaders,” he said in his email.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/27/health/marijuana-emergencies-hospitalization-study-wellness/index.html

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CAL AMSTERDAM – Brain scans could help police detect cannabis impairment in drivers – Driving under the influence of psychoactive drugs is a serious offense and a major catalyst for vehicle-related accidents.

Driving under the influence of psychoactive drugs is a serious offense and a major catalyst for vehicle-related accidents. In order to detect irresponsible drivers and sanction them, law enforcement officers employ various tools such as breath analyzers to detect alcohol in a person’s system or rapid drug tests that can respond to specific markers for cocaine, marijuana, and other drugs.

In the not-so-distant future, road checks could also employ mobile brain scanners that detect particular patterns of neural activity associated with intoxication. Scientists explain how this might work for cannabis impairment in a new study.

The alcohol content in the blood is closely related to alcohol-related impairment. Even though a breathalyzer indirectly measures the amount of alcohol in one’s breath, a measurement on the handheld device over a certain threshold of intoxication is very closely correlated with the person’s genuine inability to perform well on the road.

There are also breath tests for THC, the main psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, but they’re not reliable for quantitative analyses. They just tell you if someone used marijuana recently, not how high they actually are. Prosecuting someone who legally used marijuana the night prior due to having THC detected in their breath the next morning is neither fair nor productive for law enforcement whose resources and man hours are stretched thin as they are.

In the United States, there are 18 states, along with Washington D.C. and Guam, that have legalized the recreational use and sale of marijuana. With more states planning similar legislative changes, there is now an important need for developing technological solutions that distinguish between impairment and mild intoxication with THC.

Unlike alcohol, a person’s concentration of THC in the body does not correspond well to functional impairment. People who use cannabis very often quickly develop tolerance and don’t have their driving impaired despite the high levels of THC in their system. Furthermore, THC’s metabolites — the byproducts of THC after the body’s metabolism breaks down the drug — can last in the bloodstream for weeks after cannabis use, well beyond the period one could be deemed intoxicated.

Testing strips or breath analyzers can only tell you if a person used marijuana, but not how much, how recently, or how intoxicated the user truly is. This is why researchers at the Massachusetts General Hospital have developed a noninvasive brain imaging procedure that can reliably identify cannabis users whose performance is impaired in real-time.

For their study, 169 volunteers who use cannabis underwent functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) — a technique that measures blood oxygenation changes similar to fMRI, based upon the changes in absorption of light emitted by sources onto the surface of the head and measured by detectors — before and after receiving either oral THC or a placebo.

Those who reported feeling intoxicated after being given oral THC also showed an increased oxygenated hemoglobin concentration (HbO) — a type of neural activity signature from the prefrontal cortex region of the brain – compared to those who reported low or no intoxication. Although the same dose was given to all volunteers, there was a very wide range of impairment measured by the researchers, from very mild intoxication to obvious impairment, underscoring the unreliableness of using THC in the blood or oral fluid to identify impairment.

“Identification of acute impairment from THC intoxication through portable brain imaging could be a vital tool in the hands of police officers in the field,” said A. Eden Evins, MD, MPH, founding director of the Center for Addiction Medicine and senior author of the new study. “The accuracy of this method was confirmed by the fact impairment determined by machine learning models using only information from fNIRS matched self-report and clinical assessment of impairment 76 percent of the time.”

The research did not assess the practicality of using this method for assessing impaired driving, but it’s easy to see how this could be useful to law enforcement. There are cheap, mobile fNIRS devices that can be incorporated into a headband or cap and thus can be quickly set up by an officer to distinguish between cannabis impairment and simple exposure.

But it might take a while before you see brain scanners on the roadside. Besides the technical challenges, there are also important privacy concerns that need to be addressed whenever dealing with such sensitive data as someone’s brain activity.

“Companies are developing breathalyzer devices that only measure exposure to cannabis but not impairment from cannabis,” says Gilman. “We need a method that won’t penalize medical marijuana users or others with insufficient amounts of cannabis in their system to impair their performance. While it requires further study, we believe brain-based testing could provide an objective, practical and much needed solution.”

The findings appeared in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology.

Brain scans could help police detect cannabis impairment in drivers

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