Cannabidiol products are coming back to Kansas after lawmakers approved to bring back the marijuana extract often used as alternative medicine. Lawmakers voted in April to exclude cannabidiol, or CBD, from the state's definition of marijuana as long as the oil contains no THC, the ingredient in marijuana that gets people high. The vote effectively makes CBD an unrestricted substance, the Kansas City Star reported . The state's decision came after Attorney General Derek Schmidt issued a January opinion saying any form of marijuana is against the law in Kansas. [continues 175 words]
Amid budding efforts to research the medical benefits of marijuana, a simple problem has emerged -- how do you research marijuana if no one can produce it under federal law? Despite a solution proposed in mid-2016, which allowed the Drug Enforcement Administration to approve marijuana manufacturers, only the University of Mississippi has been approved, despite dozens of applications to do so. And there's no sign the DEA intends to approve others anytime soon. Advocates seem to blame one person for the delays: Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Ian Prior, spokesman for the Department of Justice, declined to comment on the issue. [continues 708 words]
Congressman Pete Sessions used a speech to a group of doctors and other healthcare providers at an opioid epidemic summit Tuesday to suggest that marijuana is the gateway to addiction and as a campaign against the medical and recreational legalization movement. The Republican from Dallas called the rising number of deaths from opioid overdose a "national crisis" and implored those on the front lines of the fight, the scientific and medical communities, he said, to provide solutions he can bring to Congress, saying he will get the appropriate funding added to next month's budget bill. [continues 1053 words]
He smoked pot, grabbed a steak knife and meditated, cops say. Then his mom walked in. Terrell Banks told police the paranoia set in after he smoked weed. Banks, a 23-year-old from Racine, Wisconsin, allegedly said the marijuana "put him beyond his comfort zone," even though the drug has never made him feel that way before, according to Fox6. He grabbed a steak knife, he told police, and walked around his house because of the unsettling feeling. He tried to meditate, Banks said, but the voices in his head said someone was attempting to rape him. Then his mom walked in the house, according to a criminal complaint detailed in the Racine County Eye. [continues 226 words]
Within weeks an estimated 150,000 Texas patients suffering from untreatable epilepsy will have a new means of relief. Cannabidiol (CBD), a form of medical marijuana, will finally be delivered to patients who qualify under the state's very strict guidelines. The CBD reduces or halts convulsive epileptic seizures but doesn't get the patients stoned. Right now, the treatment will be available only for certain epilepsy patients, and it's highly controlled. We believe availability should be expanded for treatment of other conditions when there's evidence those patients can be helped. We urge state lawmakers to begin work through the political and medical hurdles now so they can make that happen when they meet in 13 months. [continues 388 words]
In just a few weeks, medical marijuana will legally be sold in Texas. The plants are nearly finished growing in South-Central Texas, which means workers will soon harvest and cultivate them, drying them out and preparing to extract low-level cannibidiol. Once that medicine is in a liquid form, and packaged in drops, the first sales of medical marijuana -- geared to help Texans with intractable epilepsy -- will occur before the end of this year. "It's very, very exciting," said Jose Hidalgo, chief executive officer of Cansortium Holdings, the Florida-based parent company of Cansortium Texas. "Nothing in life ever goes as planned. [continues 501 words]
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has signed legislation to add post-traumatic stress disorder to the list of ailments that can legally be treated with medical marijuana. The PTSD bill was part of a package of legislation that Cuomo signed Saturday to mark Veterans Day. The Democratic governor said 19,000 New Yorkers with PTSD could be helped by medical marijuana. He said the potential beneficiaries include veterans as well as police officers and survivors of domestic violence, crime and accidents. [continues 55 words]
Any day now, medical marijuana will legally start to grow in the state of Texas. It will be planted, grown and processed on a 10-acre parcel of land in Schulenburg, a small community east of San Antonio, now that the company that owns the property -- Cansortium Texas -- has received the state's first license to do so. The low-level cannabidiol will be sold, under a 2015 law, to help Texans with intractable epilepsy if federally approved medication hasn't helped. [continues 1020 words]
In 2015, Gov. Greg Abbott signed the first bill allowing any growing or sale of marijuana in Texas. The Texas Compassionate Use Act legalized the selling of a specific kind of cannabis oil derived from marijuana plants for a very small group of customers: epilepsy patients whose symptoms have not responded to federally approved medication. Two years later, Texans still can't legally buy cannabis oil, but a handful of companies believe they are weeks away from receiving the official go-ahead to become the state's first sellers. [continues 859 words]
President Barack Obama on Thursday commuted the 20-year prison sentenced imposed on Richard Ruiz Montes, convicted in 2008 for his role in the Modesto's pot-dealing California Healthcare Collective. In one of his final presidential acts, Obama used his executive authority to cut Montes' sentence by more than half. Now held at a federal facility in Atwater, according to the Bureau of Prisons' inmate locator, the 36-year-old Montes will be released May 19. He is identified as Richard by the White House and Bureau of Prisons, but has also been known as Ricardo. The White House listed his hometown as Escalon. [continues 184 words]
A Pew Research Center survey of nearly 8,000 police officers finds that more than two-thirds of them say that marijuana use should be legal for either personal or medical use. The nationally representative survey of law enforcement, one of the largest of its kind, found that 32 percent of police officers said marijuana should be legal for medical and recreational use, while 37 percent said it should be legal for medical use only. Another 30 percent said that marijuana should not be legal at all. [continues 424 words]
An Arlington police officer is popular on social media Thursday because of a video that shows he gave a teenager caught smoking marijuana in a movie theater parking lot an unorthodox alternative to being arrested: pushups. Officer Eric Ball was working off-duty Monday night at the theater in Arlington when someone told him that a teenager was smoking marijuana outside, WFAA-TV reported. Ball went outside to find the teen finishing a cigarette and discarding it, and Ball smelled marijuana when he approached him. [continues 175 words]
Grapevine Police Join Police Assisted Addiction and Recovery Initiative Nonprofit Organization Works With Local Police and Opioid Addicts Treatment Centers Are Better Than Jail We all learned about the effects of illegal drugs in health class, from TV and parents. We've watched fictional drug addicts on anything from Orange is the New Black to Elementary. We all know that drugs are bad, and drug dealers are even worse. We want both off the streets and away from kids. In those worst-case scenarios, a teenager becomes addicted to drugs. He or she gets arrested for drug possession and then has a criminal record. [continues 286 words]
Twenty Three States Allow Medicinal Use of Marijuana. Texans for Responsible Marijuana Policy launched a campaign Wednesday hoping to bring awareness to veterans' need for responsible marijuana use for service-related injuries. The campaign, named "Operation Trapped," aims to "collect a single used prescription bottle from every state veteran who wants a safer alternative" and present the collection of bottles at a news conference on Veterans Day 2016 in Austin. The coalition includes multiple chapters of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws and other groups. [continues 268 words]
FORT WORTH - Move over, GOP convention-goers, the marijuana reformists are in Cowtown, too. The Dallas-Fort Worth chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws is hosting the second annual Texas Regional NORML Conference this weekend in downtown Fort Worth. More than 300 people are expected to attend. A few blocks away, thousands of Republicans are attending the state party convention at the Fort Worth Convention Center. NORML organizers decided that this weekend was the ideal time to broach the issue, saying the stage is set for reform. [continues 174 words]
The slaying in Southlake Town Square of a Mexican attorney with reputed ties to drug cartels was a brazen and well-coordinated assassination that illustrates the increasingly long and lethal reach of the brutal criminal organizations, security experts say. The flamboyant public hit was unusual because Mexican cartels try to stay off the radar on this side of the border. But it underlines an ominous trend: Dallas-Fort Worth has become a key "command and control" center for moving drugs and people across the country, top state and federal law enforcement officials confirm. [continues 1640 words]
FORT WORTH - In what was perhaps the largest legalize marijuana demonstration in Fort Worth, more than 200 activists marched through downtown Saturday with the noticeable aroma of cannabis lingering behind as they passed. Organizers said several hundred more had turned out last year for a similar march in Dallas, which had provided police security. But there was no particular Fort Worth police presence as demonstrators, carried signs, some openly toking on pipes and chanting, "Le-gal-ize! Le-gal-ize!" One person dressed as a marijuana plant and several played instruments while a march organizer drove a recycled police car with flashing green lights and covered with logos of the Dallas/Fort Worth chapter of NORML, the national group to reform cannabis laws. [continues 375 words]
State Rep. Harold Dutton of Houston has filed a bill (HB184) to reduce the penalty for possession of 1 ounce or less of marijuana to a Class C misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of up to $500. Present law makes the punishment for possessing 2 ounces or less of marijuana up to 180 days in jail, with a fine up to $2,000. It makes sense to create a lower punishment for the lower amount. Police officers now spend hours processing defendants, who then take up space in county jails. Courts have to appoint lawyers for those who can't afford one. And resources are diverted from more serious crime. [continues 94 words]
Advocates of legalizing marijuana in Texas say they are optimistic that their message will begin to catch on with Texas voters after Colorado and Washington state voted Nov. 6 to approve legalizing the possession of small amounts of marijuana for recreational use. "We're encouraged and more convinced than ever that we will eventually prevail," said David Sloane, a spokesman for DFW Norml, a North Texas group that promotes marijuana legalization. "Prohibition is far more harmful to our communities than marijuana ever will be, and taxpayers are sick of their money being used to support failed drug war policy." [continues 406 words]
FORT WORTH -- Calling America's war on drugs a campaign that has spread violence worldwide, created distrust in law enforcement and wasted billions of tax dollars, a former federal investigator called for the legalization of drugs. Sean Dunagan said Saturday that because drugs are illegal, people involved in dealing drugs turn to violence to settle disputes. "There are no arbiters, there are no courts, there are no contracts, so necessarily all disputes get settled by violence," said Dunagan, who worked for the Drug Enforcement Administration. [continues 281 words]
