Jul 29, 2016 Gov. Bruce Rauner Signs Illinois Marijuana Decriminalization Bill Into Law Illinois is now the 21st state in the nation to remove the threat of jail time for simple marijuana possession; possession of a personal amount is now considered a civil violation punishable by a fine of $100-$200, similar to a traffic ticket…
Reporting from WASHINGTON — Tucked deep inside the 1,603-page federal spending measure is a provision that effectively ends the federal government’s prohibition on medical marijuana and signals a major shift in drug policy. The bill’s passage over the weekend marks the first time Congress has approved nationally significant legislation backed by legalization advocates. It brings almost…
It must have been something in the air. During a short time window at the end of the last ice age, Stone Age humans in Europe and Asia independently began using a new plant: cannabis. That’s the conclusion of a review of cannabis archaeology, which also links an intensification of cannabis use in East Asia…
Rates of marijuana use among Colorado’s teenagers are essentially unchanged in the years since the state’s voters legalized marijuana in 2012, new survey data from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment shows. In 2015, 21 percent of Colorado youths had used marijuana in the past 30 days. That rate is slightly lower than the national…
“Cannabis brings us an awareness that we spend a lifetime being trained to overlook and forget and put out of our minds.” — Carl Sagan Most of us remember Carl Sagan as a brilliant scientist, a popularizer of both the methods and progress of human knowledge. Some know him as an advocate of space exploration…
Dan Baum, writing in support of drug legalization at Harper’s, has unleashed a frank 1994 quote from former Nixon policy advisor John Ehrlichman, and as inadvertently salient an argument for legalizing drugs as any I’ve ever seen: At the time, I was writing a book about the politics of drug prohibition. I started to ask…
Marijuana sales in the United States reached a record high in 2015. Legal in Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, and the District of Columbia, a whopping $3.4 billion of the green stuff was sold last year, according to Marijuana Business Daily’s Marijuana Business Factbook . The best way to give that figure some kind of perspective is by comparing…
The government in Italy recently decriminalized the cultivation of medical marijuana and production of the plant for research purposes. The court system in Italy is one of the most overcrowded and inefficient in Europe, so the government was forced to roll back a few of their laws and regulations to prevent so many people being…
I wish to support Senator Warren’s encouragement of the scientific community to pursue marijuana as treatment for pain and as a means to reduce the tragic increases in deaths by opiate overdose. By Scott Mendelson, M.D., Contributor On February 8, 2016, Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote a well publicized letter to Dr. Thomas Friedan, the Director of…
New research published today in the journal JAMA Psychiatry found that using marijuana as an adult is not associated with a variety of mood and anxiety disorders, including depression and bipolar disorder. This is a challenge to some previous research which has shown that marijuana use is associated with depression and anxiety. The researchers examined the records of…
