Witch News

The essential daily read for the Witches of Weed Sex. Drugs. Magic.

[witchnews-blog]

Complicated Federal Job Recruitment

For all the aspiring and current spies, diplomats and F.B.I. agents living in states that have liberalized marijuana laws, the federal government has a stern warning: Put down the bong, throw out the vaporizer and lose the rolling papers.

It may now be legal in Colorado, in Washington State and elsewhere to possess and smoke marijuana, but federal laws outlawing its use — and rules that make it a fireable offense for government workers — have remained rigid. As a result, recruiters for federal agencies are arriving on university campuses in those states with the sobering message that marijuana use will not be tolerated. 

So members of a new generation are getting an early lesson in what their predecessors have done for as long as there has been espionage, diplomacy and bureaucracy. They are lying and, when necessary, stalling to avoid failing a drug test. As any regular marijuana smoker will tell you, it usually takes about two weeks for evidence of marijuana use to disappear from urine, a urine sample being the method by which drug use ordinarily is tested.

“Delaying something is part of what a good diplomat is supposed to know how to do,” said John, a young American diplomat who lives in Washington, D.C., where marijuana use became legal this year. “If you can’t put off a test for two weeks, I mean, come on.” He spoke on the condition that only his first name be used in an effort to avoid losing his job.

Government officials who have gotten high are hardly rare, and the long list of elected officials who have admitted to past use of marijuana — and other substances — starts with President Obama, who wrote that he had used both marijuana and cocaine. But there is a widening chasm between what voters are willing to tolerate and what federal agencies allow, leaving men and women who are trying to build careers in government with a choice between honesty and their ambitions.

The C.I.A. requires that its job candidates be “generally” drug free for at least a year, and asks potential hires about past use, according to Lyssa Asbill, an agency spokeswoman. But how much past use constitutes too much is not clear. The F.B.I. has even tougher standards. The bureau insists that recruits refrain from marijuana use for at least three years before hire.

[witchnews-blog]

Rauner Should Sign Sensible Marijuana Bills

One bill would reset the starting date for a pilot program allowing ill people to buy medical marijuana. A law permitting medical marijuana passed in 2013, but because of bureaucratic delays, not a single patient has been able to get legal pain-easing pot.

As the law now stands, the pilot program will end Jan. 1, 2018, just 2½ years from now. That’s not much time, given that the pilot program isn’t even up and running yet and no one is sure when it will be. The new bill would reset the deadline to about four years after the first dispensary opens. 

Entrepreneurs have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars setting up medical marijuana operations, and they deserve a chance to earn their money back. If they are forced to try to recoup their investments too quickly, prices will soar, patients will turn to marijuana sold on the street and the program will fail. The entire point of a pilot project is to see what works. Two years won’t do it.

The second pot-related bill headed Rauner’s way essentially would decriminalize the recreational use of small amounts of marijuana — 15 grams or less — by establishing fines of $55 to $125 instead of jail time.

The bill simply codifies what already is happening all around the state. Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez earlier this year said her office would stop prosecuting people for small amounts of marijuana. Back in 2012, Chicago allowed police to give people with 15 grams or less tickets instead of criminal sanctions.

The bill also would give motorists with small amounts of marijuana in their systems a pass. Now, any amount of marijuana can be grounds for a DUI. The bill would set the limit at 25 nanograms per milliliter in saliva and 15 grams of THC — marijuana’s psychoactive component — in blood. The change is based on federal standards and the fact that traces of marijuana remain in the body even after the effects of THC have worn off.

Opponents of the bill worry there is no treatment component for repeat offenders. But seriously. Do people caught with a couple of joints from time to time really need to be put in a treatment program?

[witchnews-blog]

Marijuana Is Not, Repeat Not, a Gateway Drug

With states legalizing marijuana by popular vote, some politicians, including Boston mayor Marty Walsh and New Jersey governor Chris Christie, are still calling marijuana a gateway drug.

The gateway theory argues that because heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine users often used marijuana before graduating to harder drugs, it must be a “gateway” to harder drug use. The theory implies that there is a causal mechanism that biologically sensitizes drug users, making them more willing to try—and more desirous of—harder drugs. 

Yet the gateway hypothesis doesn’t make sense to those who use marijuana or have used in the past. Research shows that the vast majority of marijuana users do not go on to use hard drugs. Most stop using after entering the adult social world of family and work.

So why is it still part of the rhetoric and controversy surrounding the drug? A closer look reveals the historical roots—and vested interests—that are keeping the myth alive.

Explaining Hard Drug Use

When analyzing what acts as a “gateway” to hard drug use, there are a number of factors at play. None involve marijuana. Poverty and poor social environment is a gateway to drugs, according to much research.

Association with people who use hard drugs is a better predictor of harder drug use.

Certain mental illnesses, such as antisocial personality and bipolar disorder, are found to predispose some people to use drugs.

Other research notes that criminalization and prohibition are real gateways to harder drugs.

With so much research challenging the gateway theory, it’s important to examine—and dispel—the research that proponents of the myth latch onto. But What About All That Evidence?

Most of the research linking marijuana to harder drug use comes from the correlation between the two. However, as any junior scientist can tell you, correlation does not mean causation.

Correlation is a first step. A correlation can be positive or negative; it can be weak or strong. And it never means a cause unless a rational reason for causality is found.

The brain disease model, which describes changes in the brain during the progression from drug use to addiction, currently gets a lot of attention as a potential causal link of the gateway theory. For example, in a 2014 article, neuroscientist Dr Jodi Gilman reported that even a little marijuana use was associated with “exposure-dependent alterations of the neural matrix of core reward systems” in the brains of young marijuana users. The reasoning goes that this would predispose them to use other drugs.

But other researchers were quick to point out the flaws of the Gilman study, such as a lack of careful controls for alcohol and other drug use by those whose brains were studied. Nonetheless, Dr Gilman’s research continues to be cited in the news media, while its critics are ignored.

In another study supporting the gateway theory, the authors admit to limitations in their study: that they excluded younger cocaine users from the analysis, as well as older cocaine users who had never used marijuana. This means that those cases that might provide evidence of no gateway effect were left out of the analysis. One the other hand, there’s a wealth of research showing the flaws in the gateway theory. Unfortunately, the common thread among these studies is that much of them come from outside the U.S. or from grassroots organizations within the U.S. that are promoting marijuana legalization.

U.S. Drug Policy Began with Racist Fear-Mongering

So why is it that most of the funded research pointing out flaws in the gateway theory comes from overseas?

As Nathan Greenslit explained in an Atlantic article last year, U.S. drug policy began with racist fear-mongering by Federal Bureau of Narcotics director Harry Anslinger in 1937.

The Nixon administration strengthened drug control with the creation of the Drug Enforcement Agency, which classified marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug, against the advice of the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse.

Because marijuana is still officially classified in the U.S. as a Schedule I drug with no medical value, carefully controlled research using marijuana must receive approval from several federal departments. On the rare occasions that researchers do get approval, local politics can thwart the study.

Meanwhile, in the United States, addiction researchers and addiction treatment professionals are heavily invested in the weakly supported claim that marijuana is a gateway to hard drugs. For decades, scientists who study addiction have received millions of dollars in government and pharmaceutical funding to perpetuate the gateway hypothesis. Many would lose their respected reputations (or continued funding) if a gateway mechanism is not a legitimate research goal.

Those who work in the vast addiction treatment profession are especially invested in keeping the gateway theory believable, since the majority of their treatment patients are marijuana users. Their jobs depend on a belief in addiction as a disease and on marijuana being an addictive drug.

Scare Tactics

Today, what started as scare tactics under Anslinger has been “modernizied” (and mystified) by scientific jargon.

Sociologists Craig Reinarman and Harry G. Levine described how the media and politicians manufacture drug scares to influence policy. One fear perpetuated is that marijuana use will increase if decriminalized.

But a 2004 study compared Amsterdam, where marijuana was decriminalized, to San Francisco, where cannabis was, at the time, still criminalized. The authors found that criminalization of marijuana didn’t reduce use, while decriminalization didn’t increase use.

The gateway fear has focused mostly on youth. For example, newly elected Maryland governor Larry Hogan announced that he is against legalization partly out of concern that “marijuana use would increase among young people.” Meanwhile, parents are concerned by recent research showing marijuana’s effect on the brain.

These studies showed structural changes and loss of white matter in marijuana users, although the limitations of these studies and implications were questioned by other research.

But fears of decriminalization resulting in increased use among youth haven’t been supported by research from countries where drugs were decriminalized. Nor has this trend been noted in studies of U.S. states that legalized marijuana for medical or recreational purposes. For example, in an article published in the American Academy of Pediatrics, the authors found no evidence that young people had increased marijuana use in states that had legalized medical or recreational marijuana.

The worst impact on kids, according to these authors, was the potential for criminal prosecution. A Gateway To Jail

Studies consistently find that the traumatic experience of being arrested and incarcerated for marijuana possession is the most harmful aspect of marijuana among young people. Arrest for possession can result in devastating—often permanent—legal and social problems, especially for minority youth and low-income families.

According to studies by the ACLU, nearly half of all drug arrests were for marijuana possession, and the majority of those arrested were African-American. In some states, African-Americans were more than eight times more likely to be arrested for marijuana than whites.

Unfortunately, marijuana legalization has not changed arrests and incarceration disparities for minorities. While African-Americans have always been over-represented for drug arrests and incarceration, new research shows African-Americans are more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession after marijuana reform than all other races were before marijuana policy reform. Although in some states decriminalization makes possession a “noncriminal” offense, it can still be illegal and can result in an arrest, court appearance and stiff fines.

Marijuana as a Gateway—Out of Hard Drugs

On the periphery of the marijuana-as-gateway-drug debates are studies showing marijuana as beneficial for the treatment of opiate addicts. These have been largely ignored. However, now that marijuana has become legal for medical purposes in some states, new research offers substantial findings that can’t be dismissed.

Crime has not increased in states that have legalized marijuana; it’s actually gone down. Surprisingly, opiate overdose deaths have gone down as well.

As I’ve written previously for The Conversation, anyone who actually talks with problem drug users (and doesn’t simply talk about them) knows that marijuana can help drug users prevent, control—even stop—hard drug use.

If anything, marijuana can work as a gateway out of hard drug use—an exit strategy that needs to be studied and, possibly, implemented at the policy level. It’s time to move beyond marijuana as a gateway drug and start to study its use as treatment for the deadly, addictive and socially devastating drugs.

[witchnews-blog]

Police in Colorado Issue Dozens of Citations

Denver police said there were no major problems as marijuana celebrations continued for a second day on Sunday, but police tweeted a reminder that while recreational use of marijuana is legal in Colorado, people still can't use it in public.

Police spokeswoman Raquel Lopez said there was no estimate on the number of people who turned out on Saturday and Sunday, including many tourists who flocked to Colorado to take advantage of legal marijuana. 

An estimated 125,000 showed up in Denver for its annual weekend celebration, according to The Denver Post.

"We'd prefer not to be buzzkills this 4/20 weekend. Consume responsibly, and designate a sober driver now," police tweeted on Sunday.

On Saturday, police issued about 60 citations. Police said most were for public consumption. No information was available on any arrests on Sunday. "It certainly seems to be going OK," Lopez said Sunday.

The law against public consumption is widely flouted, especially around the 4/20 celebrations. Celebrations were held over the weekend near the Denver City and County Building, but police said no one had a permit in Denver for Monday, the unofficial stoner holiday of 4/20. However, a number of people were still expected to show up, and Lopez said police will issue citations at their discretion.

The origins of the number 420 as a code for marijuana are murky. Fans of the drug have long marked April 20 as a day to enjoy pot and call for increased legal access to it.

A small plane flew over the crowd with a banner urging people to grow their own marijuana.

Meanwhile, the University of Colorado will keep the Boulder campus open to the public on pot day this year, the first time in three years since university officials tried to snuff out the once-massive marijuana smoke-out on campus.

Chancellor Phil DiStefano said he felt that a lack of activity on April 20 in the past three years made it possible to keep the campus open this year.

[witchnews-blog]

A federal judge declined on Wednesday to order the removal of marijuana from the Drug Enforcement Administration’s list of the most harmful and addictive drugs, disappointing those who had hoped the courts might help settle growing conflicts between federal and state laws.

Judge Kimberly J. Mueller of United States District Court in Sacramento heard testimony on whether marijuana belonged alongside heroin and LSD on the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Schedule I list: substances classified as having no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. 

As more has been learned about marijuana’s therapeutic properties, however, 23 states, including California, have legalized the use of medical cannabis, and four states have approved its recreational use, creating confusion on how or whether federal law will be enforced.

Judge Mueller will continue to preside over the case, in which the federal government is prosecuting 16 men in California accused of conspiring to grow more than 1,000 marijuana plants in Shasta-Trinity National Forest. Defense lawyers had argued in court filings that the charges should be dismissed in part because marijuana’s Schedule I classification was arbitrary and unconstitutional. They asserted that the 10th Amendment barred the federal government from superseding state laws legalizing marijuana for medicinal use. Judge Mueller ruled that any adjustments to the law were better left to Congress. “This is not the court and this is not the time,” she said Wednesday, according to a report by The Associated Press. A written ruling will be issued by the end of the week.

The decision dismayed advocates of marijuana legalization. “The medical benefits of cannabis are undeniable,” said Jeremy Norrie, a medical marijuana user in West Hollywood, Calif., who operates the Secret Cup, a cannabis trade show. “To keep it in the Schedule I classification is knowingly ignorant. It seems more to me that this judge wanted to avoid controversy and having to deal with the issue. We don’t see anywhere near the kind of public problems that the other drugs in Schedule I have.”

A spokesman for the D.E.A., Matthew R. Barden, said it would not comment until officials saw Judge Mueller’s written ruling.

The ruling is one of several indications that some resolution between federal and state marijuana laws may be approaching. In 2013, the Justice Department recommended that federal officials not target dispensaries, growers and patients who complied with state marijuana laws and had no links to cartels or interstate smuggling.

Moreover, the 2015 appropriations bill passed by Congress in December barred the Justice Department from spending money to interfere with any state’s efforts to carry out its medical marijuana laws. The Justice Department has countered that it can still prosecute violations of the federal marijuana ban and continue cases already in the courts.

[airows]

[witchnews-blog]

Florida Voters Want Medical Marijuana, Decriminalized Weed

Although Florida citizens narrowly voted against legalizing medical marijuana this past Election Day, a new poll of Sunshine State voters revealed that Floridians are in favor of both legalizing marijuana for medical use and decriminalizing weed for personal use. The new study also shows that the only reason that voters rejected the pro-pot Amendment 2 in November is because the prospective law's wording "troubled many voters," ABC Action News in Tampa Bay reports.

In a poll conducted by Quinnipiac University, a resounding 84 percent of Florida voters said they would vote in favor of a bill to legalize medical marijuana. However, when Amendment 2 was brought to voters, only 58 percent of citizens voted in favor of the bill, just 2 percent shy of the 60 percent needed to enact the law. According to Quinnipiac, it's likely Amendment 2's complex wording likely conspired against itself, as only 14 percent of Floridians polled said they would vote against a legalized medical marijuana bill. 



States like Alaska, Washington, Colorado and, starting in July, Oregon have all embraced decriminalized weed, and if the Quinnipiac poll captures the tenor of Florida voters, it's not a matter of "if" but "when" the Sunshine State follows suit. In the new poll, 55 percent said they would be in favor of decriminalized weed laws similar to that of Oregon and Alaska - meaning no dispensaries but legalized possession and personal cultivation - while 42 percent would be opposed to such a law.

Surprisingly, of those 55 percent, a majority of that number admits they still wouldn't use marijuana. Only 17 percent of those polled said they would "definitely" or "probably" take advantage of Florida's lax marijuana laws, while 81 percent admitted they still wouldn't get high even if they were allowed to.

"These results show that marijuana legalization is a mainstream issue that ambitious politicians should try to latch onto instead of run away from," Tom Angell, Chairman of Marijuana Majority, told ABC Tampa. "If the next president isn't willing to personally support ending prohibition as the best policy approach, he or she at least needs to push for changing federal laws so that seriously ill people can use medical marijuana without fear of being harassed by the DEA."

[witchnews-blog]

Synthetic marijuana sends more than 2 dozen to UMMC

Medical experts at the University of Mississippi Medical Center are stressing the dangers of using "spice," a synthetic but very potent form of marijuana, after more than two dozen people were treated for adverse effects of the drug over the Easter weekend.

About 26 people since Thursday night have been seen at UMMC's Emergency Department for symptoms of spice overdose, and the drug is suspected of causing the death of another person, said Dr. Robert Galli, a professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine and executive director of TelEmergency. A total 28 individuals sickened by the drug have been tracked by the Mississippi Regional Poison Control Center since Thursday, state Department of Health officials say. The drug "causes very significant adverse health consequences involving emergency care and hospitalization," Galli said.

Those seen at UMMC's Emergency Department displayed agitation, sweating, hyperactivity, hallucinations, acute psychosis, and in some situations, were in a comatose state. Some of them had prolonged symptoms and complications of rhabdomyolysis, or rapid breakdown of muscle tissue, requiring hospitalization. All are residents of the Jackson metropolitan area.

"Spice" is a catch-all name for a wide variety of herbal mixtures that produce experiences that are sometimes similar to what a person feels after smoking marijuana. Often marketed as "safe" alternatives to marijuana, spice is generally ingested by smoking and sold under a variety of names, including K-2, fake weed, Yucatan Fire, Scooby Snax, Anthrax, Mojo, Skunk and Moon Rocks. They contain dried, shredded plant materials and a mix of chemical additives that produce psychoactive, or mind-altering, effects. Labels on their packaging tout "natural" ingredients and say they are "not for human consumption," but in fact, their active ingredients are synthetic, or "designer," cannabinoid compounds.

Although spice users report experiences similar to those produced by marijuana, including elevated mood and perception and relaxation, the effects are often much stronger than marijuana. Synthetic marijuana is often more toxic to the brain than marijuana because its potency can be 100 times greater or more than THC, which is the active ingredient in pot. "Some of the patients we've seen over the weekend have said, 'This is not like anything else we've used before,' " Galli said.

[witchnews-blog]

Indiana's New Religious Freedom Law May Have Unintended Consequences — Including Legal Weed Smoking

Indiana lawmakers are hastening to draft and pass language this week that will "clarify" the state's newly passed religious freedom law after enormous public outcry. But some pundits point out that the gaping holes left by the law will result in a slew of unintended consequences that might not be that easy to fix. On Friday, the same day Governor Mike Pence signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the First Church of Cannabis sought and received approval from Indiana's secretary of state to operate as a church. Under the new law, members of the church may be able to smoke marijuana as part of its religious belief system, according to Indiana lawyer and political commentator Abdul-Hakim Shabazz, who first called attention to the marijuana church's move last week.

Shabazz told VICE News today that Indiana's new law could protect many types of behavior under the guise of religious freedom, including Native American tribes smoking peyote and Muslim prisoners being allowed to grow beards.

"It got me thinking, a lot of religions use marijuana in rituals — the Rastafarians, the Zion Coptic Church of Ethiopia — so then I did some research online and under RFRA [Religious Freedom Restoration Act] in the state of Indiana. It pretty much says that before the government can infringe on your religious liberty, it has to offer up a good argument," Shabazz said. "So now, when you arrest someone for pot possession, he can claim he's a Rastafarian and those are his religious beliefs.

"It's not a comment on RFRA, it's just pointing out that you can't say you only get religious freedom for your sake or your population, when other people can take advantage of this too," Shabazz said. "It opens up a lot of questions and issues I don't think my friends at the State House fully understand." The law's unintended consequences may be a surprise to Pence and other legislators, who seemed surprised over the weekend at the blowback they were receiving from businesses and the public across the nation over the law. "I just can't account for the hostility that's been directed at our state," Pence told the Indianapolis Star."I've been taken aback by the mischaracterizations from outside the state of Indiana about what is in this bill."

Indiana Senate President David Long and House Speaker Brian Bosma held a press conference first thing Monday morning to say they would "encourage our colleagues to adopt a clarifying measure of some sort to remove this misconception about the bill."

In addition to loopholes like the potential legality of smoking marijuana, lawmakers were met with a flood of economic consequences. The CEOs of multiple companies, including Apple and Salesforce, have condemned the law, with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff announcing the company was stopping all business travel to Indiana. The consumer ratings site Angie's List, which is headquartered in Indianapolis, immediately halted its plans to build a new headquarters in the city.

"We are putting the 'Ford Building Project' on hold until we fully understand the implications of the freedom restoration act on our employees, both current and future," said Angie's List CEO Bill Oesterle in a statement.

Sports organizations, including the NCAA and the NFL, are being called on to take their business out of Indiana following the law's passage. The NCAA, which is headquartered in Indianapolis and hosting the men's college basketball Final Four Tournament there this weekend, said it was concerned about the legislation. More than 59,000 fans signed a petition asking the NCAA to move out of the state, while former professional players including Jason Collins and Charles Barkley said the league should think twice about hosting the event in a state with legal discrimination.

A slew of other repercussions emerged over the weekend as well: openly gay actor George Takei called for a boycott of Indiana on Twitter and suggested the gaming convention Gen Con could leave the state, the cities of Seattle and San Francisco have banned city employees from traveling to Indiana on taxpayer funds, and Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy said today that he's implementing a travel ban.

"Because of Indiana's new law, later today I will sign an executive order regarding state-funded travel," Malloy tweeted.

Sheila Kennedy, a longtime political commentator in Indiana politics and current professor of law and policy at Indiana University, said that the state's lawmakers were clearly not anticipating any of the consequences they are now faced with over the law intended to appeal to conservative Christians. "The people at the State House thought, 'we'll pass this meaningless bill,' but didn't anticipate the blowback," she told VICE News.

Since Indiana has no anti-discrimination bill on its books to protect gays and lesbians anyway, the new bill protecting the right to discriminate is unnecessary, she said. The politics surrounding the bill are actually about getting even for 2014's gay marriage ruling, she said.

"There was a group of angry Christian conservatives who were used to getting their way and they were badly beaten in the fight over gay marriage. They're still smarting over that. So this was sort of a way to stick their thumb in the eye of the gay community," Kennedy said.

"Pence is stuck between rock and hard place," she said. "His base is the extreme, religious right, so he can't afford to back off now. But everybody else, including the business wing of the Republican Party, is."

Pence and other lawmakers said they will try to clarify the law this week, but they will not repeal it.

[witchnews-blog]

Marijuana Charger Plummet

It should come as no surprise that when Colorado legalized marijuana, criminal charges connected to the plant would be reduced. But a comprehensive new report released Wednesday reveals just how dramatically the new drug policy has reformed criminal justice in the state.

The report by the Drug Policy Alliance reveals that, overall, the total number of charges filed in state courts for marijuana possession, distribution and cultivation fell by nearly 95 percent across the state -- from 38,878 total charges in 2010 to just 2,036 in 2014. 

Charges for possession, the category with the largest number of charges each year pre-legalization, dropped from 30,428 in 2010 to 8,978 in 2012 -- the year Amendment 64 was passed, legalizing retail marijuana in the state -- then dropped to 1,922 in 2014, when retail marijuana shops opened their doors for the first time. The report notes that those still getting charged for possession are primarily charged with being in possession of an excess of 1 ounce of marijuana. State law bans the possession of more than an ounce by adults 21 and over.

Distribution and cultivation charges, which numbered in the thousands prior to legalization in 2010, have nearly vanished from the state's stats in 2014, with only 23 distribution charges (a 99 percent drop from 2010) and 91 cultivation charges (a 96 percent drop).

While most marijuana charges were trending downward, there was a spike in charges for public "display/consumption" in Denver -- up from just eight in 2012, to over 800 in 2014. That's largely due to law enforcement cracking down on public display/consumption of marijuana, since Amendment 64 was approved by state voters. However, while the overall number of arrests for marijuana offenses dropped significantly from 2010 to 2014, racial disparities in marijuana arrests still persist in the state. That's largely because "law enforcement practices that produce racial disparities in such arrests have not changed" since legalization, the report reads. In 2010, the marijuana possession arrest rate for whites in the state was 335 per 100,000 people; for blacks it was 851 per 100,000 -- meaning that the arrest rate for black people in the state was more than twice as high as the arrest rate for white people. Meanwhile, black people account for less than 4 percent of the state's entire population, but amount to more than 9 percent of the state's marijuana possession arrests. And while the overall number of arrests for marijuana possession declined significantly by 2014, blacks are still arrested more than twice as much as whites for possession, and still made up more than 9 percent of possession arrests. The data was obtained from the state's judicial system and compared the number of cases and charges brought before the courts before and after the passage of Amendment 64. That was combined with data from the National Incident Based Reporting System used by law enforcement agencies statewide to report crimes. The report's author notes that the data does not include all possession cases for the state's capital city of Denver because of inconsistencies between local and state criminal code. “It’s heartening to see that tens of thousands of otherwise law-abiding Coloradans have been spared the travesty of getting handcuffed or being charged for small amounts of marijuana,” Art Way, Colorado state director for the Drug Policy Alliance, said in a statement about the report.

[witchnews-blog]

One surprising downside of marijuana legalization: major energy use

Across the country, there’s a growing trend toward the legalization of marijuana. Four states — Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Alaska — have voted to allow people to possess limited amounts of marijuana use for personal use and also to let producers apply for licenses to produce and sell it. D.C. also just voted to allow personal possession. All of this is on top of the 23 states that allow it for medical reasons.

In some states, where businesses are also now legally cultivating and producing marijuana, a mainstream industry is emerging. Marijuana sales totaled $700 million in Colorado last year, for instance. But there’s a surprising catch. It turns out that indoor marijuana growth in particular — a cultivation method often favored in the industry for many reasons — uses a surprising amount of energy. 

Indeed, the level of power use appears to be so significant that one scholar is now suggesting that as the industry grows, states and localities should take advantage of marijuana licensing procedures to also regulate the industry’s energy use and greenhouse gas emissions.

“Given that this is a new ‘industry’ that is going to be pretty highly regulated, I felt like the state and local policymakers have a unique opportunity to incorporate energy usage and climate assessments into their state marijuana licensing fees,” says Gina Warren, a professor at the Texas A&M University School of Law whose paper, titled “Regulating Pot to Save the Polar Bear: Energy and Climate Impacts of the Marijuana Industry,” will soon appear in the Columbia Journal of Environmental Law.

The published statistics on energy use from indoor marijuana production will blow your mind (whether or not you use the stuff). In a 2012 study of the “carbon footprint of indoor cannabis production” published in the journal Energy Policy, researcher Evan Mills noted that “on occasion, previously unrecognized spheres of energy use come to light,” and marijuana is a textbook example.

The study estimated that indoor cannabis (both illegal and illegal) uses $6 billion worth of electricity every year, amounting to 1 percent of overall U.S. electricity. And in some production-intensive states like California, it was much higher — 3 percent, Mills found.

“One average kilogram of final product is associated with 4,600 kg of carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere, or that of 3 million average U.S. cars when aggregated across all national production,” wrote Mills.

The reason is simply the technology required. “Specific energy uses include high-intensity lighting, dehumidification to remove water vapor and avoid mold formation, space heating or cooling during non-illuminated periods and drying, pre-heating of irrigation water, generation of carbon dioxide by burning fossil fuel, and ventilation and air-conditioning to remove waste heat,” writes Mills.

Outdoor production also has environmental consequences — it has been charged with deforestation and high levels of water and pesticide use. But as pot becomes more legal and mainstream, notes Warren, outdoor producers will have to abide by preexisting environmental laws, just like everyone else.

In effect, that makes indoor production the chief climate change and energy concern. According to Warren’s article, while underground indoor marijuana production already consumed plenty of energy, legalization will increase energy use even farther. “As the industry grows, so will its negative externalities,” she writes.

Which is why she’s proposing that states that legalize marijuana use should also require the growing industry to power itself cleanly. And it’s not without precedent: Starting in October of this year, Boulder County in Colorado will require many marijuana facilities to “directly offset 100% of electricity, propane, and natural [gas] consumption” through renewables or other means.

Warren says she’s not “picking on the marijuana industry” with her proposals — it’s just that, well, we don’t often have new industries appear that use a lot of energy and are likely to be highly regulated as they become legal.

“I think it could actually be a marketing tool for the industry,” says Warren, “because if you have people who are purchasing the product who are the type of individual who cares about the environment, then they would gravitate towards the green marijuana production.”

[mortimersays]

[witchnews-blog]

Marijuana Gears Up for Production High in U.S. Labs

Residents of 23 US states can buy medical marijuana to treat everything from cancer pain to anxiety, but US scientists must wade through onerous paperwork to score the drug for study. Their sole dealer is the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), which has a contract with the University of Mississippi in Oxford to produce marijuana for research purposes.

The agency has long faced complaints that its marijuana is too weak to represent what is sold on the street, and contains low levels of the non-psychedelic chemicals that show therapeutic promise for conditions such as epilepsy and chronic pain. Now, with legal marijuana increasingly available to the US public, NIDA is quietly changing course—working to expand the amount and variety of the drug available for study. 

“We want to be able to evaluate the claims that marijuana is therapeutically beneficial” and to explore treatments for addiction, says Nora Volkow, director of NIDA in Rockville, Maryland.

In 2014, the institute increased its spending on research marijuana by 50%. Annual production at the University of Mississippi farm, where all the agency supplies are grown, soared from 18 to 600 kilograms, and the crop harvested late last year includes two new strains. One has low concentrations of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), marijuana’s primary active ingredient, but high levels of cannabidiol, a non-hallucinogenic substance that seems to have therapeutic effects. The second has relatively balanced levels of the two chemicals.

Mahmoud ElSohly, who directs the University of Mississippi cultivation programme, says that the new strains will soon be ready to ship to researchers. But the farm’s improved offerings may not appease NIDA’s critics—including US states such as Colorado, which legalized recreational pot use in 2012. In December, the Colorado state government asked the federal government to allow state universities to grow marijuana for research, citing bureaucratic hurdles in obtaining products from NIDA and from private growers overseas.

And the agency’s most potent strains still fall short of the most powerful street pot. At least 90% of the marijuana seized by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) contains high levels of THC—often more than 20% by weight. NIDA’s pot contains 12% THC at most. “Let me just say: lame,” says Rick Doblin, director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, a non-profit organization in Santa Cruz, California, that funds research into mind-altering drugs. It is not clear how NIDA’s plants compare with those distributed by medical-marijuana dispensaries. Although legal under local state laws, such dispensaries are still illegal under federal law, so researchers cannot simply buy pot there to test. And because Congress voted last year to prohibit the federal government from raiding such facilities, the products are not available for NIDA to study, either. “I don’t know what dispensaries have,” says ElSohly. “I wish I did.”

The pool of US scientists who study marijuana is small, and to Volkow’s surprise, it has not grown despite the increasing availability of legal pot and NIDA’s efforts to ease limits on such research. Volkow suspects that scientists may simply need time to plan new experiments that involve marijuana, which must be evaluated by NIDA, the DEA and, in the case of clinical research, the Food and Drug Administration. Donald Abrams, a physician at the University of California, San Francisco, who studies cannabinoids as cancer therapies, offers another theory. The rise of precision medical technologies such as gene therapy makes it less attractive to study a plant, he says—particularly one as controversial as marijuana.

Doblin suggests that successful therapies derived from marijuana are most likely to emerge outside the United States, in countries where licensed growers can provide the plant at relatively low cost and in high quantities. GW Pharmaceuticals in Salisbury, UK, uses marijuana from its private farm to produce Sativex (nabiximols), a multiple-sclerosis drug that is approved for use in 27 countries. And private growers in Israel and Canada produce research- and clinical-grade pot that is cheaper than NIDA’s crop. (The agency charges researchers US$1,525 per kilogram, or $7 per cigarette.)

NIDA says that it plans to limit its pot program to individual researchers for the time being. But there is a nascent push in Congress to end the agency’s monopoly on research marijuana: bipartisan legislation introduced in the Senate on 10 March would allow at least three growers to obtain licenses to cultivate pot for studies. If the US government decides to expand legal marijuana production significantly, Canada could serve as a model. In April 2014, the Canadian government began allowing private firms to apply to grow medical marijuana; it has since awarded 16 licenses. Canadian researchers who want to study marijuana or perform clinical trials obtain the drug by partnering with a grower. Because multiple companies hold licenses, there is wide diversity in the strains available.

“The system that’s implemented right now will allow for really good collaborations,” says Joshua Eades, chief science officer of the medical-marijuana producer Tilray in Nanaimo, Canada. The company is working with researchers at the University of British Columbia Okanagan in Kelowna on an 40-person clinical trial of marijuana to treat post-traumatic stress disorder. Expected to start in early summer, it will be one of the largest-ever tests of marijuana for mental health.

With pot increasingly available to science outside the United States, Doblin says, “the NIDA monopoly is doomed.”

[witchnews-blog]

Alcohol Or Marijuana? Pediatrician Faces Question

As my children, and my friends’ children, are getting older, a question that comes up again and again from friends is this: Which would I rather my children use — alcohol or marijuana?

The immediate answer, of course, is “neither.” But no parent accepts that. It’s assumed, and not incorrectly, that the vast majority of adolescents will try one or the other, especially when they go to college. So they press me further. 

The easy answer is to demonize marijuana. It’s illegal, after all. Moreover, its potential downsides are well known. Scans show that marijuana use is associated with potential changes in the brain. It’s associated with increases in the risk of psychosis. It may be associated with changes in lung function or long-term cancer risk, even though a growing body of evidence says that seems unlikely. It can harm memory, it’s associated with lower academic achievement, and its use is linked to less success later in life.

But these are all associations, not known causal pathways. It may be, for instance, that people predisposed to psychosis are more likely to use pot. We don’t know. Moreover, all of these potential dangers seem scary only when viewed in isolation. Put them next to alcohol, and everything looks different.

Because marijuana is illegal, the first thing I think about before answering is crime. In many states, being caught with marijuana is much worse than being caught with alcohol while underage. But ignoring the relationship between alcohol and crime is a big mistake. The National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence reports that alcohol use is a factor in 40 percent of all violent crimes in the United States, including 37 percent of rapes and 27 percent of aggravated assaults.

No such association has been found among marijuana users. Although there are studies that can link marijuana to crime, it’s almost all centered on its illegal distribution. People who are high are not committing violence.

People will argue that casual use isn’t the issue; it’s abuse that’s worrisome for crime. They’re right — but for alcohol. A recent study in Pediatrics investigated the factors associated with death in delinquent youth. Researchers found that about 19 percent of delinquent males and 11 percent of delinquent females had an alcohol use disorder.

Further, they found that even five years after detention, those with an alcohol use disorder had a 4.7 times greater risk of death from external causes, like homicide, than those without an alcohol disorder.

When I’m debating my answer, I think about health as well. Once again, there’s no comparison. Binge drinking accounted for about half of the more than 80,000 alcohol-related deaths in the United States in 2010, according to a 2012 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The economic costs associated with excessive alcohol consumption in the United States were estimated to be about $225 billion dollars. Binge drinking, defined as four or more drinks for women and five or more drinks for men on a single occasion, isn’t rare either. More than 17 percent of all people in the United States are binge drinkers, and more than 28 percent of people age 18 to 24.

Binge drinking is more common among people with a household income of at least $75,000. This is a solid middle-class problem.

Marijuana, on the other hand, kills almost no one. The number of deaths attributed to marijuana use is pretty much zero. A study that tracked more than 45,000 Swedes for 15 years found no increase in mortality in those who used marijuana, after controlling for other factors. Another study published in the American Journal of Public Health followed more than 65,000 people in the United States and found that marijuana use had no effect at all on mortality in healthy men and women.

I think about which is more dangerous when driving. A 2013 case-control study found that marijuana use increased the odds of being in a fatal crash by 83 percent. But adding alcohol to drug use increased the odds of a fatal crash by more than 2,200 percent. A more recent study found that, after controlling for various factors, a detectable amount of THC, the active ingredient in pot, in the blood did not increase the risk of accidents at all. Having a blood alcohol level of at least 0.05 percent, though, increased the odds of being in a crash by 575 percent.

I think about which substance might put young people at risk for being hurt by others. That’s where things become even more stark. In 1995 alone, college students reported more than 460,000 alcohol-related incidents of violence in the United States. A 2011 prospective study found that mental and physical dating abuse were more common on drinking days among college students. On the other hand, a 2014 study looking at marijuana use and intimate partner violence in the first nine years of marriage found that those who used marijuana had lower rates of such violence. Indeed, the men who used marijuana the most were the least likely to commit violence against a partner.

Most people come out of college not dependent on the substances they experimented with there. But some do. So I also consider which of the two might lead to abuse. Even there, alcohol fares poorly compared with marijuana. While 9 percent of pot users eventually become dependent, more than 20 percent of alcohol users do.

An often-quoted, although hotly debated, study in the Lancet ranked many drugs according to their harm score, both to users and to others. Alcohol was clearly in the lead. One could make a case, though, that heroin, crack cocaine and methamphetamine would be worse if they were legal and more commonly used. But it’s hard to see how pot could overtake alcohol even if it were universally legal. Use of marijuana is not rare, even now when it’s widely illegal to buy and use. It’s estimated that almost half of Americans age 18 to 20 have tried it at some point in their lives; more than a third of them have used it in the last year. I also can’t ignore what I’ve seen as a pediatrician. I’ve seen young people brought to the emergency room because they’ve consumed too much alcohol and become poisoned. That happens thousands of times a year. Some even die. And when my oldest child heads off to college in the not-too-distant future, this is what I will think of: Every year more than 1,800 college students die from alcohol-related accidents. About 600,000 are injured while under alcohol’s influence, almost 700,000 are assaulted, and almost 100,000 are sexually assaulted. About 400,000 have unprotected sex, and 100,000 are too drunk to know if they consented. The numbers for pot aren’t even in the same league. I’m a pediatrician, as well as a parent. I can, I suppose, demand that my children, and those I care for in a clinic, never engage in risky behavior. But that doesn’t work. Many will still engage in sexual activity, for instance, no matter how much I preach about the risk of a sexually transmitted infection or pregnancy. Because of that, I have conversations about how to minimize risk by making informed choices. While no sex is preferable to unprotected sex, so is sex with a condom. Talking about the harm reduction from condom use doesn’t mean I’m telling them to have sex.

Similarly, none of these arguments I’ve presented are “pro pot” in the sense that I’m saying that adolescents should go use marijuana without worrying about consequences. There’s little question that marijuana carries with it risks to people who use it, as well as to the nation. The number of people who will be hurt from it, will hurt others because of it, begin to abuse it, and suffer negative consequences from it are certainly greater than zero. But looking only at those dangers, and refusing to grapple with them in the context of our society’s implicit consent for alcohol use in young adults, is irrational.

When someone asks me whether I’d rather my children use pot or alcohol, after sifting through all the studies and all the data, I still say “neither.” Usually, I say it more than once. But if I’m forced to make a choice, the answer is “marijuana.”

[witchnews-blog]

Pot-Smoking Stockbroker Has Steady Supplier: Feds

The interior of Irvin Rosenfeld's Toyota 4Runner reeks of marijuana. A tin stuffed with hundreds of joints lies in the trunk, and a bag full of them is stored in the door pocket. On a recent weekday, the 62-year-old stockbroker stopped at a red light and took a drag. His exhale filled the cabin with smoke. It was his fourth joint that day. It wasn't yet lunchtime.

"This car has 80,000 miles on it," Rosenfeld announced between puffs, stray ash landing softly on the battered towel he drapes over his pleated brown trousers and red tie. "I haven't gotten into one accident." 

“This car has 80,000 miles on it. I haven't gotten into one accident.”- Irvin Rosenfeld

Rosenfeld would smoke five or six more joints by day's end. In between, he would trade tens of thousands of dollars in stocks. Some days, the broker moves millions around, pausing occasionally to steal drags of marijuana from the smokeless vapor pen that tides him over indoors.

Clients have given their blessing to his 10-joint-a-day habit.

So has the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The federal agency at the forefront of the war on drugs is normally unyielding in its view that marijuana has no valid medical use. But it not only gives permission to Rosenfeld to light up any place cigarettes are allowed, but it also acts as his dealer. Rosenfeld gets that special treatment because he has a rare bone disorder that gives him a lot of pain. He is one of only two people in the nation still actively involved in a federal program that supplies marijuana free to patients suffering from certain diseases.

The government harvests infrequently and Rosenfeld's current stash came out of the ground six years ago. Not exactly prime bud. But good enough that in three decades he has consumed about 216 pounds — hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth — to ease his pain.

"I am getting my money's worth out of my taxes, that's for sure," he said. "I am one of the few people in this country who never complains about paying them." The program started in 1976 when Robert Randall of Florida convinced a court that pot was essential to treating his glaucoma. Rather than open the door to patients growing their own marijuana, drug officials chose to supply it to Randall.

Rosenfeld was the next to secure the same deal, and 11 more patients would trickle in, including the other patient the government still supplies, Elvy Musikka, an Oregonian with glaucoma. A doctor authorized by the government to treat Rosenfeld with marijuana writes his prescriptions and gives him regular checkups.

The pot comes from a farm in Mississippi run by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which periodically sends the weed by FedEx to Rosenfeld's pharmacy.

The marijuana is rolled tightly into joints that are freeze-dried and packed 300 to a container. The joints come with 14 pages of instructions on how to properly rehydrate them — most of which Rosenfeld ignores. Instead, he unrolls them, moistens their contents in plastic bags lined with wet paper towels and later rolls them back into joints.

After Rosenfeld received his first shipment, he recalled, he saw a commercial in which FedEx boasted, "We ship anything." He pointed to the bag of federal pot he was holding and told his wife, Debbie, "That's a true statement." In the early 1990s, the Food and Drug Administration ruled that scores of AIDS patients should be given access to the program. Thousands might have signed up, but the administration of President George H.W. Bush changed the policy and halted the program.

Since then, the government has avoided keeping track of Rosenfeld's pot smoking. "The government was never comfortable with this program," said Rick Doblin, executive director of the Multidisciplinary Assn. for Psychedelic Studies, a Santa Cruz-based group that is lobbying to change federal restrictions that have pushed most major medical marijuana research abroad.

"They are just waiting for all the people in it to die.... They purposely are not gathering data," Doblin said. Federal officials said patient privacy laws prohibited them from discussing whether they monitor Rosenfeld and Musikka.

Rosenfeld says the drug relieves pain that is otherwise so intense that he can sit or walk for only short stretches. Because so few studies have been done on the medical effects of pot, no one can say for certain why it works for him. Nor do researchers understand why he never seems stoned.

“Whenever he came to my office, he wasn't out of it or spacey. He was like your prototypical stockbroker.” - Juan Sanchez-Ramos, neurologist who treated Rosenfeld

A neurologist who treated Rosenfeld for six years, Juan Sanchez-Ramos, attributes it to a tolerance created from so much smoking, along with the low potency of government pot.

"Whenever he came to my office, he wasn't out of it or spacey," said Sanchez-Ramos, who has Rosenfeld's permission to discuss his case. "He was like your prototypical stockbroker."

The 10-page federal protocol Rosenfeld carries with him designates that he may smoke marijuana with impunity. It says he can drive so long as he is not intoxicated. These days, Rosenfeld no longer stands out for using pot to treat an ailment. About 1 million Americans do so — in 23 states and the District of Columbia, which allow at least the medical use of marijuana.

The federal government's long-standing consent to Rosenfeld's drug use has attracted renewed attention as Congress softens its opposition to marijuana and a growing number of doctors denounce drug policies that prevent research aimed at turning pot into a properly controlled pharmaceutical.

Rosenfeld goes about his day like any other Floridian — except for the marijuana. He plays in a softball league. He doesn't light up until the other players are enjoying their postgame beer.

He donates his time to an organization that teaches disabled kids how to sail. He doesn't smoke around children and waits until he drives away to puff on a joint. He travels cross-country. He carries a note when he flies that directs airline security to ignore the cache of pot in his luggage.

Being in so rare a category does sometimes lead to problems in this state, where pot is banned altogether. Rosenfeld recalls a recent run-in with DEA agents based in the office park where he worked.

"I was resting in my car at lunchtime, having my usual two joints, and all of a sudden there is pounding on all four windows," Rosenfeld said. "I opened my eyes and the car was surrounded. One big guy puts a gold badge against the window and announced I was under arrest."

Rosenfeld told them they were mistaken. They told him they were the DEA. "I said, 'Great. You should be familiar with my program!'" Rosenfeld said. It got weirder for the agents when Rosenfeld pulled out his bag of joints with the prescription on it, and then walked around to the back of his car to show them the tin can stuffed with marijuana.

Along with it, he handed over a yellowing copy of Newsweek magazine. Bill Clinton's sexual harassment accuser, Paula Jones, was on the cover. Tucked inside the issue was a story about Rosenfeld.

Rosenfeld jokes that he is resented at work because he won't share his marijuana stash, but one person who is not eager to sample it is Debbie Rosenfeld. Over the years, she developed an allergy to cannabis. Ultimately, living together became untenable for the couple. They separated.

Every one of Irvin Rosenfeld's 250 clients at the investment firm Newbridge Securities knows he's a pot smoker, he said. He brings it up by asking them whether they know anybody who has taken on the federal government and won. He tells them he has, and promises to use that same gumption in making them money. "If you like the idea of that, I say, then use me as your stockbroker," Rosenfeld said. "If you don't like the idea of me using 10 cannabis cigarettes a day for my bone disorder, then fine, have a great life."

The owners of Newbridge declined to be interviewed and in the past asked Rosenfeld not to reveal where he worked. A few months ago the firm launched a fund that invests exclusively in medical marijuana businesses and appointed Rosenfeld an advisor to it. Since then, Newbridge's reservations about being linked to Rosenfeld disappeared.

Before Rosenfeld headed back into his office to make afternoon trades, he sat on a plush leather couch in a common area drawing hits from his vapor pen while cradling the open canister crammed with joints. Buttoned-down colleagues shuffled by. Not one of them did a double take.

[witchnews-blog]

D.C. Employers Find Themselves On Front Line

From white-linen restaurants to K Street law firms, D.C. employers have found themselves on the front lines of defining marijuana legalization in the nation’s capital. If your employee shows up bleary-eyed, can you do anything about it? And what protections will unions be able to offer?

A survey of D.C. business owners and union leaders in the week since the District legalized possession, use and home cultivation of marijuana shows these questions have begun to fuel a lively debate in workplaces. 

Well, at least in most places. Construction firms with fleets of heavy machinery and hefty insurance bills have been among the first to reiterate their no-drug policies to employees. The FBI has also left a handy question-and-answer about marijuana use unchanged on its Web site. “Have you used marijuana at all within the last three years?” Those who answer yes, the FBI says, need not apply.

And while a D.C. Council committee tried to bring some clarity to the issue last week, some employers said it only added to the confusion.

Under an emergency measure now in place, and permanent legislation the council will take up later this month, D.C. employers will be banned from requiring drug testing of a prospective employee before extending a job offer.

But the law won’t free employees to light up without consequence. Employers will retain the right to screen for drugs after making a job offer — and to enforce their own drug policies for anyone on the payroll. The law also doesn’t interfere with federal employees, who remain prohibited from lighting up.

The bill’s primary function, said Council member Vincent B. Orange (D), who authored the measure, is to give prospective workers time to “clean up” for a job in workplaces that often prohibit what is now a legal intoxicant in the city.

“It’s a first step,” said Orange, who said he believes the measure will also help employers. “They want to know that, once on the job, employees will be drug-free.” The D.C. Chamber of Commerce said in an e-mail to Orange’s office that it would not oppose the bill. But Chamber President Harry Wingo declined to comment.

“It’s complicated . . . and employees getting fired is an unintended consequence of marijuana legalization,” said Scott Moss, a professor who specializes in employment law at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

“Legalization laws didn’t anticipate whether employers can fire you for using marijuana in a state that has legalized marijuana.”

In fact, a handful of court cases now working their way through the Colorado court system may shed light on the issue. Moss attended oral arguments before the state’s supreme court last fall for a case — involving a satellite-television company employee fired for marijuana use — that could provide a watershed ruling.

As in Colorado, the issue that employment experts said is likely to emerge in D.C. is that while legalized, the city has not said that marijuana use is a protected right. No U.S. jurisdiction has declared that marijuana falls under anti-discrimination chapters in employment law.

And as long as marijuana remains a controlled substance under federal law, employers can point to that in disputes with employees, Moss said. Conflicts have increased in Colorado. Positive drug tests have spiked, according to private firms who do much of the testing. And a survey last year of businesses in Colorado found that 71 percent of employers left their drug polices in place. But legalization appeared to have an unintended effect with 21 percent of others. They responded by publishing stricter no-drug policies, according to the Mountain State Employers Council, which conducted the survey.

Among those with the strictest drug policies in the District are employers in the national security arena. Stewart A. Baker, former general counsel at the National Security Agency and a former senior policy adviser at the Department of Homeland Security, said he could offer only “informed speculation” about how the District’s new drug law might intersect with some of its most secretive employers. “The traditional view is that drug use in the past five years is not a serious problem; whether it’s a problem at all is a serious question,” Baker said. “But this is not like sexual preference, where once it’s legal and accepted it’s not a basis for blackmail,” he said. “My guess is it would be treated as a concern even if it’s lawful. Especially in the current context, where it’s lawful at federal level and unlawful at local level.”

On the opposite end of the employment spectrum, it’s still a “sticky situation” there too, said Nikki Lewis, executive director of DC Jobs with Justice, which represents a number of working-class employees.

“It seems like the low-wage job market is getting more and more competitive for hiring — from having to come in a suit to increased drug testing in order to be ‘qualified’ for service, retail, or hospitality” jobs, she said.

Employees who partake could be at risk. That appears to be true for cooks and servers at I Ricchi, an Italian restaurant near Dupont Circle.

Christianne Ricchi said she’s been thinking about what might happen, and certainly doesn’t want the D.C. government imposing any further rules limiting what she might do.

“I take my responsibility toward my business, toward my current employees and toward my customers very seriously,” Ricchi said. “If the situation arose and I felt it necessary to ask for a marijuana test, I would like to know that I have that available.” Khalid Pitts, who with his wife owns Cork Wine Bar on 14th Street near Logan Circle, said he feels bound by the ballot measure legalizing marijuana and if employees want to partake on their own time, that’s now their choice.

“Voters have passed rules essentially legalizing it, so in that sense, it should be treated just like we would treat alcohol,” Pitts said. But he’s not worried about a confrontation.

[witchnews-blog]

Washington state cannabis retailer opens in defiance of county ban

Sealed bags of marijuana dangle behind a counter, curved glass pipes glimmer on shelves, and a steady trickle of middle-aged customers gleefully buys cannabis strains nicknamed Charlie Sheen and Godzilla.

"The Gallery" is similar to more than 100 other lawful state-licensed marijuana retail shops and hundreds of medical dispensaries in Washington state, with one exception: It is operating in defiance of local law.

Its opening on Sunday set up a potential showdown with authorities in Pierce County, about an hour outside Seattle, which has effectively banned recreational pot shops in unincorporated areas so long as the drug remains illegal under federal law, even as medical pot businesses flourish virtually unregulated.

"We didn't do this to pick a fight with the county," said co-owner Tedd Wetherbee, 47, in between chatting up customers in his shop in Parkland, in unincorporated Pierce County.

"But at the same time we are state-licensed legitimate businessmen that want to do what the county seems to let other people do without any license." Since Washington state legalized recreational marijuana in a landmark 2012 vote that ushered in licensed retail pot shops in July, scores of municipalities have passed laws curbing their operations, from constricted zoning to outright bans.

That has frustrated would-be pot entrepreneurs, such as Wetherbee, who are keen to capitalize on what they call a glut of recreational-use marijuana products with few stores licensed to sell it. Fifty-four percent of Pierce County voters backed marijuana legalization.

"This act of theater will either embolden a bunch of other people to do it, or it will create really great PR for him," said Dominic Corva, executive director at the Center for the Study of Cannabis and Social Policy.

Wetherbee has argued in lawsuits that local pot-business bans that scuttled his retail plans in two other towns violate state law, and says it makes little sense to ban tightly regulated retail establishments while allowing medicinal shops to operate unchecked.

State lawmakers are weighing proposals to license medical-use stores to, among other things, ensure their products are safe, a move entrepreneurs say would help level the regulatory playing field.

NONDESCRIPT

Amid that uncertain landscape, Pierce County authorities say they have visited The Gallery for several inspections and advised Wetherbee he lacked proper permitting.

Pierce County, which had objected to Wetherbee's application for a state retail pot license but failed to block it, could issue noncompliance and cease-and-desist orders as early as Thursday that could cost up to $1,000 in daily fines if ignored.

Washington state's top lawyer has said the recreational marijuana law does not prevent local governments from banning pot businesses. But state regulators who grant the licenses do not consider local laws in their review process. "We have issued other state licenses in places where there are bans and moratoriums, though he is the only retailer that I have heard of, but there may be others," said Liquor Control Board spokesman Brian Smith.

There was no sign of controversy on Tuesday in Wetherbee's shop, where pot products are displayed beside sculptures and abstract art. Its nondescript entrance contrasts sharply with the bold signage of a gun shop next door. A cut-out of former President Bill Clinton invites shoppers to "please feel free to inhale." A security guard checks that patrons are at least 21 years old. Sealed bags of cannabis strains sell for about $14 to $24 per gram.

Among the patrons was a construction worker who uses marijuana to "kick back" and a 29-year-old former U.S. Army medic battling insomnia and anxiety since returning from Afghanistan and Iraq.

"I was going to a store down in the city (Tacoma), but this is a lot closer to my house," said the former soldier, who gave his name only as Josh. "I like the environment a lot better too, the gallery feel."