California medical marijuana lawyer

June 14, 2017

NASCAR Not Ready to Embrace Medical Marijuana

Despite the fact that the majority of Americans support medical marijuana, there have been two recent incidents involving marijuana that show the National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) is not quite ready to embrace medical cannabis as of yet. The first incident involved a NASCAR Monster Energy Cup Series team that got a sponsorship from a cannabis company and tried to put the company’s logo on the car hood, according to a recent news article from the Charlotte Observer.

LA Medical Cannabis Lawyer Once NASCAR officials saw the car with this medical marijuana company logo, including a large graphic on the hood, inspectors told the team that this was not an authorized sponsor and demanded the crew remove the stickers and decals form the car hood. This left the car without a hood sponsor, which cost the team of significant amount of money. This is harder on the driver, Carl Long, who is just back in NASCAR after a being suspended since 2009 for a serious violation involving his car in what was then called the Sprint Cup All Start Race. Continue reading

May 2, 2017

Medical Marijuana Licensing Panel’s Experience Questioned

By Cannabis Law Group

According to a recent news article from the New York Times, questions have arisen regarding the level of expertise of a medical marijuana “panel of experts” in charge of vetting dispensary applicants. The commission was established New York decided to legalize medical marijuana in 2014. Like other states, the process has moved slowly and is facing several seemingly self-inflicted obstacles standing in the way of patients getting their much-needed medical cannabis.

questionmark The panel is supposed to be composed of experts in a variety of related fields. However, their identities remain shrouded in secrecy. This alleged lack of transparency has only served to fuel criticism of the actions of the medical marijuana panel. Continue reading

April 8, 2017

California Leads U.S. in Cannabis Sales

By Cannabis Law Group

What started out as a small grassroots effort to get patients their much-needed medical cannabis has become a billion-dollar industry. While we often hear about how much money is being made in Colorado, which was among the first to legalize marijuana for recreational use, it is California that is leading the nation in sales, according to a recent news article from San Francisco Weekly.

money As discussed in the article, even though Proposition 64 passed in the last election, in order to buy marijuana in California, patients still need a doctor’s recommendation and marijuana ID card, as the dispensaries will not be able to sell marijuana to the general public for at least several more months. This is in stark contrast to states like Colorado and Washington, where anyone who is over the age of 21 can walk into a dispensary and purchase any number of cannabis products. Continue reading

September 16, 2016

Doctor: We Don’t Worry About Marijuana. Why Does the Government?

By Cannabis Law Group

A resident physician at Stanford Hospital, Dr. Nathaniel Morris specializes in mental health. In a recent editorial in Scientific American about the difference between the way health care providers view marijuana and the way the federal government regulates it, Morris expresses disbelief at the decision by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to keep marijuana classified as a Schedule I narcotic. doctor7

A Schedule I drug is one that is considered so dangerous, it has no medically-accepted purpose. It’s in the same category as bath salts and heroin. Says Morris, “I can’t make much sense of this.”

Daily, he speaks with his mental health patients about substance abuse. In his training and experience, he has learned there are some abuses that are extremely concerning, and others much less so. The very first substance he inquires about in evaluations? Alcohol. It’s effects are seen daily by emergency room doctors after drinkers crash their cars, fall into an alcohol-induced coma or inhale their own vomit. Alcohol leads to some 1.2 million emergency room visits annually, and excess alcohol consumption accounts for nearly 90,000 deaths in the U.S., according to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It causes significant problems for fetuses when their mothers drink. Then there is cocaine, also a concern for pregnant women, and also the source of heart attacks and kidney failure. Methamphetamine causes rapid heart palpitations, violent agitation and hyperthermia. Opioids – including heroin and morphine – often kill patients with sudden respiratory failure. The effects are worse when the drug is used intravenously.

But marijuana? Morris says it’s an “afterthought.” Continue reading

September 3, 2016

Medical Marijuana May be Best Solution to Painkiller Epidemic

By Cannabis Law Group

Could medical marijuana by a viable – and much safer – alternative to opioid drugs? A growing body of evidence suggests this to be true, but as a recent Scientific American article noted, scientists are having to trudge through heaps of red tape just to study it. 1398224079gyj36

It was two years ago that we learned of findings uncovered by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) which showed that in states where medical marijuana had been approved between 1999 and 2010, there were 25 percent fewer people dying from opioid overdoses. This is major when you consider the scope of the prescription pain medication epidemic nationally, particularly addictions and overdoses involving Vicodin and OxyContin. The Department of Health and Human Services reports more than 165,000 Americans died from prescription opioid overdoses between 1999 and 204. The social and health costs of this drug abuse are estimated to be $55 billion annually.

This had lead researchers on a quest to find a less risky alternative for those in desperate need of pain relief. Continue reading