Jun 20 2024

North Carolina Senate Votes to Legalize Medical Marijuana

North Carolina’s full Senate has given initial approval to legislation that would make medical marijuana legal.

By a vote of 33 to 9, the Senate has passed House Bill 563 through its second reading. The measure will receive a third and final reading on Monday, with expected passage sending it to the House of Representatives.

Originally introduced to regulate the hemp industry and ban hemp products from school grounds, the Senate Judiciary Committee amended the bill to include medical marijuana provisions.
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Jun 19 2024

Pennsylvania Lawmakers Predict Marijuana Legalization Bill Reaching Governor This Year, Sales Starting July 2025

During a Twitter Spaces event on Wednesday, Pennsylvania Senators Dan Laughlin (R) and Sharif Street (D) expressed cautious optimism about the potential for marijuana reform in the current legislative session.

Senator Laughlin, who is cosponsoring bipartisan marijuana legalization legislation (House Bill 2500) that was recently announced, noted a shift in attitudes among Senate Republicans over the past three years. “The attitudes amongst the Senate Republicans have certainly softened,” he said. Laughlin said he believes there are enough votes to pass a cannabis bill if it were put to a floor vote.

Senator Street, who is also cosponsoring House Bill 2500, was more hopeful, predicting that a cannabis bill could reach the governor by the end of the session. “I think we can get it done,” he said, suggesting that sales could begin by July 2025.
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Jun 19 2024

The 10 Largest Recreational Marijuana Markets in the US

There are 23 states that have legalized the licensed distribution of recreational marijuana. Here’s a look at the 10 with the most lucrative markets.

Between 2012 and now, the US has gone from having no states with legal recreational marijuana markets to having nearly two dozen. Although a couple of the 23 states with legal marijuana sales do not yet have licensed stores open because they legalized too recently (Ohio and Minnesota, for example), most have flourishing marijuana markets.

With that said, here are the 10 states with the largest marijuana markets based on total sales for the first quarter of this year.
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Jun 19 2024

North Carolina Senate Judiciary Committee Passes Bill to Legalize Medical Marijuana

Legislation that would legalize medical marijuana has been passed by a key committee in North Carolina’s Senate.

North Carolinians suffering from cancer, epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, and other debilitating illnesses would be able to legally purchase, possess and use medical marijuana, pending the adoption of House Bill 563 by state lawmakers.

The state Senate Judiciary Committee voted Wednesday to advance the bill, originally introduced last year to regulate the hemp industry and ban hemp products from school grounds. In an unexpected move, the committee amended the bill to allow physicians to prescribe marijuana for various serious medical conditions.
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Jun 19 2024

Study: Reddit Became Key Platform for Cannabis Conversations Among Young People Amid Pandemic

A recent study published in the journal PLOS One highlights the significant role social media, particularly Reddit, played in facilitating conversations about cannabis use among young people during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The study focused on the subreddit r/saplings, a popular forum for cannabis-related discussions, to understand the nature of information sought and shared by its users and how these conversations evolved during the pandemic.

Researchers analyzed 213 randomly selected posts and 2,546 comments from four different time periods: before the pandemic, during the first wave, summer, and the following fall. The study revealed a substantial increase in the volume of posts and comments throughout these periods, indicating that Reddit became an increasingly important platform for youth socialization and information exchange about cannabis during the pandemic.
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Jun 19 2024

North Dakota, South Dakota and Florida: The Three Recreational Marijuana Initiatives Being Voted on This November

With the news that North Dakota has already reached their signature threshold in less than two months, it’s becoming clear which states will vote this November on recreational marijuana initiatives.

Twenty-four states have legalized recreational marijuana, and three more are aiming to join the list this November. Below is an overview of these three initiatives. Continue reading

Jun 19 2024

Delaware House Approves Bill to Allow Recreational Marijuana Sales to Begin This Year

The Delaware House of Representatives has approved a bill that allows medical marijuana dispensaries to transition quickly into the recreational market, allowing recreational sales months ahead of schedule.

Today, the House voted 29 to 11 to pass House Bill 408, sponsored by State Representative Ed Osienski, with a companion bill from Senator Trey Paradee. The bill proposes temporary conversion licenses for medical marijuana retailers, enabling them to sell recreational marijuana while maintaining their medical operations.

Rep. Osienski stated, “As we approach the launch of recreational marijuana sales in Delaware, it’s vital to implement policies that support both new and existing retailers. Our experienced centers can smoothly handle this transition, using the fees from conversion licenses to support social equity applicants.”
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Jun 19 2024

Arizone Governor Vetoes Bill to Legalize Psilocybin Therapy Centers

Legislation that would have legalized access to psilocybin mushrooms has been vetoed by Governor Katie Hobbs (D).

Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs (photo credit: Mario Tama/Getty Images).

“Today, I vetoed Senate Bill 1570”, said Governor Hobbs in a public statement. “The state’s psilocybin research advisory board established last year recently issued its annual report with a clear message: although psilocybin may be a promising treatment in the future, we do not yet have the evidence needed to support widespread clinical expansion.”

Hobbs says “Arizonans with depression and PTSD deserve access to treatments that may be seen as outside the mainstream, but they should not be the subject of experiments for unproven therapies with a lack of appropriate guardrails.”
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Jun 19 2024

Study: Access to Medical Cannabis Linked to Improved Mental Health in Older Adults

A recent study by the National Bureau of Economic Research reveals that older adults living within a 30-minute drive of a licensed medical cannabis dispensary report fewer days of poor mental health.

The study, titled Medical Cannabis Availability and Mental Health: Evidence From New York’s Medical Cannabis Program, was conducted by teams from the University of Pittsburgh and Johns Hopkins University

“Evidence on cannabis legalization’s effects on mental health remains scarce, despite both rapid increases in cannabis use and an ongoing mental health crisis in the United States”, states the study’s abstract. “We use granular geographic data to estimate medical cannabis dispensary availability’s effects on self-reported mental health in New York state from 2011 through 2021 using a two-stage difference-in-differences approach to minimize bias introduced from the staggered opening of dispensaries.”
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Jun 18 2024

Study Highlights Psilocybin’s Impact on Emotional Learning

Researchers from the University of Zurich have published groundbreaking findings on the effects of psilocybin on emotional learning.

Dried psilocybin mushrooms. (Photo credit: Rich Townsend/Getty Images).

The study, featured in iScience and available through the National Library of Medicine, sheds light on how psilocybin could be utilized in the treatment of psychiatric disorders and its potential role in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy.

The study is the first to investigate reinforcement learning with psilocybin. Researchers designed a probabilistic cue-reward task that involved presenting emotional cues—neutral or fearful faces—to participants. These faces were shown either consciously or subconsciously to analyze how psilocybin impacts learning processes when interacting with emotional stimuli.
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