The majority of Colorado’s four-year public institutions requirestudents, with few exceptions, to live on-campus their first one or twoyears.  None of them allows medical marijuana cardholders to smokemarijuana in residence halls.

Mesa State College is one of those schools, requiring freshmen andsophomores under the age of 21 who don’t live with a parent or spousein Mesa County to live in a college residence hall.  In those halls,it’s against college policy to smoke or store marijuana, whether it’sused for medical reasons or not, according to John Marshall, thecollege’s vice president for student services.

“It’s simply not something we can accommodate,” he said.

Marijuana, tobacco, alcohol and nonprescription drugs are all bannedfrom Mesa State residence halls.  Medical marijuana is not addressedseparately from marijuana in general in the student housing guide, butMarshall said that would be remedied by the fall.

So far, no students have asked the college to be released from thefreshman and sophomore requirement to live on campus so they can use amedical marijuana card off-campus, Marshall said.  But some schoolshave experienced that, including the University of Colorado atBoulder.

CU Director of Residence Life Paula Bland said she is not sureexactly how many students at the school have asked to have theirhousing deposit returned so they can use medical marijuana.  But it hashappened a handful of times this year, she said.

“It’s probably more this year than it was last year.  Last year wejust started seeing students have medical marijuana cards,” she said.

Bland said all of the requests came midyear, when a student alreadyhad been living in a residence hall and wanted to move out.

Fort Lewis College spokesman Mitch Davis said he wouldn’t besurprised if the college received some requests from cardholders tolive off-campus, but so far that hasn’t happened.

Colorado State University spokesman Brad Bohlander and University ofNorthern Colorado spokesman Nate Haas said they haven’t heard of anystudents on their campuses asking to live off-campus to use medicalmarijuana.

As of Sept.  30, the average age of a medical marijuana patient was40, according to Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. The department reported at that time Mesa County had the 10th largestamount of cardholders in the state.

Source: Daily Sentinel, The (Grand Junction, CO)
Copyright: 2010 Cox Newspapers, Inc.
Contact: letters@gjds.com
Website: http://www.gjsentinel.com/
Author: Emily Anderson

People used to go to jail for possessing small quantities ofcannabis.  That’s rarely the case these days, at least in Canada; theUnited States is a different kettle of fish where the ever-fearedmarijuaniacs are reviled in some conservative states.

Marijuana is a relatively benign drug, though still a drug that cancause harm.

That said, there are many persistent, if patently false, claims aboutthe evils of marijuana.  One that seems to have some bite, in the lawenforcement community predominantly, is that marijuana is a so-called‘gateway drug’.

The theory is that if you use marijuana you are more likely to go upthe ladder of abuse to decidedly risky drugs such as cocaine andmethamphetamine.

The logic in the gateway theory is irrevocably flawed.  In essencewhat this failed theory suggests is that marijuana use leads to theabuse of other drugs.

Succinctly, picking a number out of thin air, say 80% of cocaineabusers have used marijuana.  According to the gateway theory thatmeans that marijuana use led to cocaine use.  Logically, that isnonsense.

One could as easily assert that 90% of cocaine abusers have drankalcohol.  Therefore, as this failed logic goes, alcohol consumptionleads to cocaine abuse.

Other theories abound.  Most are wrong – logically andscientifically.

Many people I know use marijuana.  They are neither criminals norabusers of other drugs.  In fact, in my experience, it’s more often thecase that the people I know who smoke marijuana are strongly againstother drugs, methamphetamines and cocaine in particular.  They knowthat using these drugs can lead to extreme mental and-or physical harm.

In balance, though, one must acknowledge that the immoderate use ofany drug can lead to emotional and physical problems.  Alcoholics andcigarette smokers come to mind.

So what’s the attraction of marijuana?

It is both a soothing and, sometimes, mind expanding drug.  It canalso, if exceptionally, cause wild mood swings, depression, erraticbehaviour and the like.  Not unlike alcohol.

Decriminalizing marijuana will not, in and of itself, create atsunami of criminal activity.  More likely, it would take away the hugeprofits organized crime enjoys.  ( Though organized crime will alwaysfind a way to custom-make new drugs to which people will be attracted. 

If taxed, like cigarettes, like alcohol, ‘legal’ marijuana couldgenerate millions in new revenues for government treasuries.

The bigger question, perhaps, is why we humans, many of us anyway,gravitate to drugs in the first place.

Why do I enjoy a nice cold beer? So much?

Alcohol, as marijuana, provides a relief.  It is not a sign ofweakness that we seek release and relief from our stresses, it’shealthy that we seek to relieve stress.

Stress, as Canadian Hans Selye, who coined the term in the 1950s,showed, is a healthy part of everyday life.  It makes us stronger. However, when stress goes beyond a tipping point, its damaging effectsaccumulate.  Relief, through drugs, meditation, exercise – choose yourpoison – appears in this context a ‘natural’ mechanism to protectourselves.

The best stress reliever, however, is a strong community – of family,friends and acquaintances.  Love remains the elixir that unburdens us.

Now there’s an addiction we can all live with.

Jim Mosher is the Editor of the Interlake Spectator.

Source: Stonewall Argus and Teulon Times, The (CNM
Copyright: 2010 Sun Media
Contact: http://www.stonewallargusteulontimes.com/feedback1/LetterToEditor.aspx
Website: http://www.stonewallargusteulontimes.com
Author: Jim Mosher

“It was fun,” he said.  “You’d laugh, you’d do silly things.”

These days, though, he’s quite serious about marijuana and what he sees as its myriad benefits.

Melamede, a biology professor at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, is president and CEO of Cannabis Science, “an emerging pharmaceutical cannabis company.” The startup, which is looking to establish its offices in the Springs, has about 10 employees, including a lab director.  The company’s goal: to tap into the growing use of medical marijuana in Colorado and elsewhere by developing cannabis-based medicines.  ( Cannabis is the botanical name for the plant that marijuana comes from.  )

Cannabis-based medicines would have the same health benefits as marijuana, Melamede said, but with one key advantage: They could be covered by health insurance.  Right now, “anybody who’s a medical marijuana user, they don’t have marijuana covered by health care.”

There’s precedent for such medicines.  Sativex is a natural marijuana extract developed by a British company, GW Pharmaceuticals.  Bayer Healthcare markets Sativex, which comes in the form of an oral spray, in Canada to relieve pain related to multiple scleroris and advanced cancer; in the United States, it’s been approved for use in clinical trials.

Cannabis Science, partnering with an international regulatory-compliance firm, is working toward approval from the Food and Drug Administration for a clinical trial using a cannabis-based medicine to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.  After that, it’s targeting the chronic-pain market.

When all that might happen is one of the big unknowns.

“I couldn’t give you a time frame for getting this done because there are simply so many variables,” said Richard Cowan, chief financial officer for Cannabis Science.

Ideally, Melamede said, the company could submit an application to the Food and Drug Administration within a few months.  After that, “it would very much depend on whether the FDA feels it is important enough to fast-track us.”

Early on, the company looked to follow in GW’s footsteps and eyed the Canadian market.  But, Melamede said, “the Canadian bureaucracy is no better.  And the market is much smaller.  So why not just go for the gold?”

Bumpy Beginning

Cannabis Science has its roots in Cannex Therapeutics, a San Francisco-based company founded by Steve Kubby, an entrepreneur, medical marijuana user and former Libertarian Party candidate for California governor.  Cannex became a public company last year through a reverse merger with an oil company, Gulf Onshore; a reverse merger is a fast-track way for a private company to go public without a conventional initial public offering.

Shortly after, the company was renamed Cannabis Science.  In a rocky start, though, the board of directors ousted Kubby as president and CEO last July and replaced him with Melamede, who had been science officer.  The public falling out involved accusations hurled against both sides; a filing by Cannabis Science with the Securities and Exchange Commission accused Kubby of “inappropriate and unauthorized” behavior on several fronts.

With the change in leadership, Cowan said, the focus of the company also changed: to Melamede and medical marijuana patients in Colorado.

“We re-focused everything around him and around Colorado,” Cowan said.

GW’s approach to developing a cannabis-based medicine was a conventional one for a pharmaceutical start-up, Cowan said, with millions of dollars raised upfront and everything “hush hush.” Cannabis Sciences’ leaner approach is to farm out as much as it can and to take advantage of starting in Colorado, “where the public is clearly and strongly behind medical marijuana.  We have both patients and providers to collaborate with and study.”

Melamede’s reputation in the medical marijuana arena, meanwhile, is the company’s “secret weapon,” Cowan said.

Melamede is a medical marijuana patient himself, using it to relieve chronic back pain and other issues.  At UCCS, he teaches a course on medical marijuana – “one of the only ones in the world,” he notes.  He calls marijuana “an anti-aging drug with incredible health benefits.”

And one of the groups he sees reaping those benefits is soldiers struggling with PTSD.

A self-professed “old hippie” from the Vietnam War days, “I’ve learned over the years to really respect much of the military and separate the military from the government,” Melamede said.  It tears at him, he said, to see soldiers suffering after their return from Iraq and Afghanistan – and the high rate of suicide among them.

Mitch Earleywine, an associate professor of psychology at the State University of New York in Albany and a member of Cannabis Science’s Scientific Advisory Board, conducted a survey of more than 1,300 veterans and others with PTSD.  “Veterans reported that cannabis helped nearly all symptoms of PTSD, with special emphasis on three important components: sleep disturbance, irritability and disturbing memories,” he said in a release announcing the study.

A state lawmaker from Pueblo recently introduced an amendment to medical marijuana regulations that would have added PTSD to the conditions covered under Colorado’s medical marijuana program, but the amendment was rejected in committee.

Sensible Colorado, a medical marijuana advocacy group, had backed the amendment.

“We hear from dozens and dozens of veterans every year that say that this helps them get off pain pills or just helps them get through what’s going on in terms of their PTSD,” said Brian Vicente, executive director of Sensible Colorado.  PTSD, he pointed out, is among the conditions covered by New Mexico’s medical marijuana program.

If Cannabis Science won approval for a PTSD treatment, it could have implications for a much wider group of patients, Cowan said.

“Twenty percent of prescriptions that are written are off-label use,” he said.  “The point is – if, for example, in our study of PTSD that we determine cannabis helps them sleep, which we know it does, then a cannabis-based insomnia medicine could be prescribed to people with insomnia, whether they had PTSD or not.”

Decriminalization Favored

Cannabis Science, in its SEC filings, cites two big challenges as it seeks to move forward.

One is funding, but Cowan said undercapitalization is characteristic of most start-ups.

“Like everybody else, we’d like a little more money,” Cowan said.  “But really, up to this point, that has not been a significant factor simply because we weren’t ready to proceed with anything that would take money.”

Given the current drought in venture capital, Cowan said the most likely sources of funding are “sophisticated investors who buy restricted shares in the company or from other possibilities, maybe licensing deals with larger companies.” Licensing is how GW got most of its financing, Cowan said.

The other issue for the company, the filings say, is “a significant prejudice against development of smoked cannabis medical products in the medical and law enforcement communities.”

Marijuana, the company notes, is still classified as a controlled substance by the federal government.  But Cowan, who is the former executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, and Melamede would like to see that change.

“We’re fully supportive of total decriminalization because it’s a God-given plant,” Melamede said.

If that happened, Cowan still sees a role for Cannabis Science, perhaps with over-the-counter, cannabis-based medicines at an affordable price.  Sativex, he noted, is “terribly expensive,” and not everyone has the time or ability to grow his own pot.

“I live in an apartment,” he said.  “I suppose I could grow somehow, but I don’t have a green thumb.”

Source: Gazette, The (Colorado Springs, CO)
Copyright: 2010 The Gazette
Contact: http://www.gazette.com/sections/opinion/submitletter/
Website: http://www.gazette.com/
Author: Bill Radford

Nevertheless, advocates hailed the Senate vote as a victory. “We are very happy,” said Mike Meno, a spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, a national organization promoting medical use of pot. “To vote by such a margin means that the Senate is in line with public sentiment nationally and here in Maryland.”

Senators from both parties supported the measure, which builds on a Maryland law passed in 2003 that allows leniency to defendants charged with marijuana possession if they can show a medical need.

“I think the Senate recognized the plight of people who have sick and chronic conditions,” said Sen.David Brinkley, one of the lead sponsors and two-time cancer survivor.The Western Maryland Republican said he views the issue as a libertarian cause.

Fourteen states allow medical use of marijuana. Private dispensaries have become a cottage industry in California and Colorado, prompting a backlash from citizens who view the policy as de facto legalization. The Obama administration had signaled that federal authorities would not crack down on medical uses,though there have been federal raids in some states.

Sponsors said the Maryland bill was crafted to avoid the criticism that has arisen in other states. The plan would require patients to have a long-standing relationship with the prescribing doctor and requiring the state to license any dispensaries.

Opponents in the Senate included Lowell Stoltzfus, an Eastern Shore Republican who views marijuana as a“gateway drug” and worries about heading down a path toward full legalization. “It is a terrible idea,” he said.

The two doctors in the General Assembly have been split on the issue. Sen. Andrew P. Harris, a Baltimore County anesthesiologist who is running for Congress, said he’d be more likely to support the measure if the number of recipients were capped. Harris offered several changes to the legislation, but they were rejected.

Del. Dan Morhaim, a Baltimore County Democrat and emergency room doctor, helped to write the bill saying he consulted with the Maryland State Police. He said he was“very excited” about Senate passage and said he hopes Saturday’s action“prompts the House to take a fresh look at it.” Both chambers met for hours Saturday, passing other key measures:

• The House approved the final version of the state’s $13 billion spending plan, which already has Senate approval.

• The House gave preliminary approval to a 3-percent tuition cap at public universities.

• The Senate delayed a vote on a ban on reading text messages while driving.

• The Senate amended a House-passed slots bill to allow card games at Rosecroft Raceway in Prince George’s County, a measure the House opposes.

• The Senate gave final approval to bill allowing a judge to shield records of peace orders or protective orders from public databases.

Baltimore Sun reporter Julie Bykowicz contributed to this article.

Source: Baltimore Sun (MD)
Author: Annie Linskey
Published: April 11, 2010
Copyright: 2010 The Baltimore Sun
Contact: letters@baltsun.com
Website: http://www.baltimoresun.com/

Igor Grant, a psychiatrist who directs the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research at the University of California, San Diego, said the five studies funded by the state involved volunteers who were randomly given real marijuana or placebos to determine if the herb provided relief not seen from traditional medicines.

“There is good evidence now that cannabinoids may be either an adjunct or a first-line treatment,” Grant said at a news conference where he presented the findings.

The California Legislature established the research center in 2000 to examine whether the therapeutic claims of medical marijuana advocates could withstand scientific scrutiny. In 1996, state voters became the first in the nation to pass a law approving pot use for medical purposes.

Thirteen other states have followed suit, but California is the only one so far to sponsor medical marijuana research. After 10 years and nearly $9 million, the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research is preparing to wrap up its work next year.

Along with the studies on muscle spasms and pain associated with spinal cord injuries and AIDS, the center also has funded research on how marijuana effects sleep and driving, limb pain due to diabetes, and whether inhaling vaporized cannabis is as effective as smoking it.

A laboratory study supported by the center examined if pot could be helpful in treating migraine headaches and facial pain. In that study, rats given a cannabis-like drug exhibited reduced activity of nerve cells that transmit pain.

State Sen. Mark Leno, a San Francisco Democrat who chairs a budget subcommittee on health and human services and supports medical marijuana, said he doubted there would be more financial support for the center given California’s ongoing budget crisis.

The federal government classifies marijuana as an illicit drug with no medical use but produces the only pot legally available for scientific research under a contract with the University of Mississippi.

Grant said obtaining some of the Mississippi crop and meeting the complex security regulations required by the Drug Enforcement Agency and other federal agencies was time-consuming and cumbersome.

Grant, however, had no problem with the quality of the government’s supply. Its consistency was helpful in determining that patients who smoked less-potent marijuana enjoyed the same amount of pain relief but less mental confusion than those who inhaled a more powerful strain, he said.

Such quality control is notably absent from the marijuana that patients with a doctor’s recommendation can legally obtain in California through hundreds of cooperatives and storefront dispensaries, Grant said.

He said more research was needed on how pot works and its side effects.

“Because we don’t know the composition of the strains that are on the street, we don’t know what patients really are getting,” he said. “As a doctor I feel some discomfort when someone says take X or Y pill or herb because we think that might be helpful.”

Source: Associated Press (Wire)
Author: Lisa Leff, The Associated Press
Published: February 17, 2010
Copyright: 2010 The Associated Press

“They’re paying us to come, and our classes are full,” says Jeff Jones, chancellor of the Los Angeles branch of Oaksterdam University, where students learn the business of marijuana from seed to ash.

Attitudes are changing as 14 states now have laws allowing some form of legal marijuana use with a doctor’s recommendation. And with legalization comes a growing cannabis industry.

In California alone, the medical-marijuana business could be worth as much as $2 billion, says Dale Gieringer, state coordinator for NORML, a marijuana advocacy group. Prices vary widely, but dispensaries have advertised an ounce of dried marijuana for $340 or more.

“Ten years ago I couldn’t get a room full of people to talk about this,” Jones says. Now, people from across the country come to learn how to legally grow, distribute and profit with pot, even though it remains illegal under federal law.

Oaksterdam holds classes in three California cities and is expanding out of state. Students learn about the law and science of marijuana as well as how to lobby local government leaders and how to tamp down the pungent, tell-tale smell of cannabis gardens. Growers often worry about theft, and because of legal uncertainties, there is always the risk of a raid by authorities.

About 7,000 people have taken classes at Oaksterdam, says Executive Chancellor Dale Sky Clare, who oversees all branches. There are waiting lists to enroll — 850 students started courses this semester, and more than 300 have signed up for next semester, she said.

“It’s not just hippies in tie-dye,” Clare says.

Mixed group of students

Jeff Studdard, a former police officer, was among students at a recent class. Studdard, 46, of Riverside County, said he had been a school district police officer and a Los Angeles County auxiliary sheriff’s deputy trained to recognize drug users until a broken back forced him to retire. The pain, even after three surgeries, prompted him to try marijuana.

“I never smoked pot as an officer,” he says, but after the injury, “I know first-hand the benefits.” He was hoping to incorporate medical marijuana in a holistic treatment business.

Kenji Klein, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California-Irvine, is studying the emerging legal pot market as a basis for his doctoral thesis. “It’s interesting to me the way social change and entrepreneurship get linked together,” Klein said.

Many students, worried about legal uncertainties, did not want to be identified.

“We all like to have fun in this industry, but sometimes people go to jail,” says Sarah Diesel, an instructor.

Oaksterdam University opened in 2007 in Oakland. Its name is part Oakland, part Amsterdam, the Dutch city known for its permissiveness toward pot. Classes are offered in Oakland, Los Angeles and Sebastopol, north of San Francisco. Last year, it expanded to Michigan, where voters passed a medical-marijuana law in 2008.

On a recent weekend, 55 students in Los Angeles paid $250 each for Marijuana 101, a two-day introductory course.

They were instructed on key court decisions, how to work in a dispensary, which varieties of cannabis are best for various ailments and how to cultivate a good pot crop.

Oaksterdam is not the only school of its type. In Michigan, Nick Tennant, 24, opened Med Grow Cannabis College. “Our law is in its infancy,” Tennant says. “We’ve been doing very well. I think there’s huge demand.”

‘People come from all over’

Oaksterdam’s founder and owner, Richard Lee, is a successful medical marijuana entrepreneur. His Coffeeshop Blue Sky is one of four dispensaries licensed in Oakland. He recently financed most of a $1 million signature-gathering effort for a proposal on California’s ballot this fall to fully legalize pot while establishing state and local taxation.

“It’s been amazing, the response,” Lee says of his school. “People come in from all over the country.”

Special Agent Casey McEnry of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, wouldn’t comment on the cannabis school but said, “It is not the practice or policy of DEA to target individuals with serious medical conditions who comply with state laws.”

Much of the school’s teaching is devoted to helping students operate within the law, while acknowledging that gray areas remain 14 years after California approved the nation’s first medical-marijuana law.

“If you have a grow, don’t let anyone know,” Diesel warns.

In a recent Los Angeles class, there were students from states with medical-marijuana laws, such as Colorado and Nevada, and states without, including Arizona, Florida, Minnesota and Texas.

Source: 2010 USA TODAY
Link: http://tiny.cc/hB8Tk
Author: William M. Welch