Welcome to Senior Cannabis Digest. This week we look at cannabis as a sleep aid for those with anxiety, Amish farmers who grow cannabis, a new way to test drivers for impairment from cannabis and much more. Enjoy.
Cannabis and Sleep
A new federally-funded study found that individuals with anxiety experience better quality sleep on days when they use marijuana compared to days when they use alcohol or nothing at all.
That’s the word from Kyle Jaeger, reporting for Marijuana Moment. He writes that researchers at the University of Colorado, Colorado State University and University of Haifa analyzed the subjective sleep quality of 347 people who said they used cannabis to treat anxiety. The research team wanted to understand the different ways sleep was affected by the use of marijuana, alcohol, neither or both on a given day.
According to Jaeger, individuals participating in the study—which appeared in the journal Drug and Alcohol Review—filled out daily surveys for 30 days, recounting their substance use and subjective sleep experience the night before. Researchers compared outcomes from non-use days, cannabis-only days, alcohol-only days and co-use days.
The authors of the study reported, “Compared to non-use, participants reported better sleep after cannabis-use-only and after co-use, but not after alcohol-use-only.”
Jaeger noted that the study also identified a relationship between the frequency of marijuana and alcohol use and sleep outcomes. The researchers found that people who used the substances more frequently reported greater sleep quality on days when they only used cannabis compared to less frequent marijuana and alcohol consumers.
Said the researchers, “Sleep quality was notably better after cannabis-only days compared to co-use days. These findings add to the emerging evidence of cannabis’s sleep-enhancing properties.”
In his article, Jaeger makes the point that the research team also found that the sleep effects of cannabis alone did not weaken over time for people who reported more frequent use of marijuana and alcohol, suggesting that tolerance didn’t influence sleep quality.
The researchers acknowledged that the study included data on people who used different types of cannabis—both in terms of dosage and product selection. Consequently, researchers said there are open questions about how certain concentrations and cannabinoid profiles may affect the results and future clinical trials could help fill those knowledge gaps.
The study was funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health.
To learn more, we suggest reading Kyle Jaeger’s excellent reporting in the November 24, 2023 issue of Marijuana Moment.net.
Travel Tips: Amish Style
Mature consumers and other tourists who are planning to visit picturesque Lancaster County, Pennsylvania may be surprised to learn there’s more to life in Lancaster’s Amish community than barn raisings, buggy rides and shoo-fly pie.
According to Miles Dilworth, reporting for Daily Mail.com.UK, a growing number of Amish farmers in Pennsylvania are embracing hemp—which can be used to make CBD—as a cash crop.
In his article, Dilworth profiles an Amish gentleman by the name of Riehl who made a cool $500,000 in 2023 selling cannabis to customers who visited his store —Lancaster County Cannabis—and to smoke shops all through the Northeast.
As Dilworth reminds readers, hemp is defined as a cannabis plant that contains 0.3 percent or less THC, the psychoactive compound responsible for the mind-altering effects of marijuana, which is defined as a cannabis plant that contains more than 0.3 percent THC.
According to the website for Lancaster County Cannabis— yep, it’s an Amish business with a website—”At Lancaster County Cannabis, we blend tradition, science, and nature to deliver the finest CBD and Delta 8 offerings.”
There’s even a blog on the website where the company promotes a healthy lifestyle and the medicinal benefits of its entire catalog of cannabis products, such as CBD bath bombs, vape cartridges, tinctures and topical CBD oil—which are said to reduce pain, inflammation, stress and help customers enjoy a better night’s sleep.
The company’s “brick and mortar” shop sells a wide variety of products, including CBD flower, CBD PreRolls at $2.00 a pop, CBD lollipops (which are said to be quite relaxing), CBD isolate in bulk and much more.
It turns out this cannabis king’s operation is much like other cannabis companies, only Amish.
Dilworth notes that Riehl now works with a group of around 20 Amish cultivators to provide a one-stop for outside buyers. They hope to expand their market to include California and Midwest processors of CBD within the coming year.
Said one farmer, “I felt like it (cannabis) was a good fit given that hemp has to be grown mostly organically. My neighbors grow tobacco to diversify and supplement their cash flow, but being an organic farm, I can’t do that because of the pesticides that are needed.”
Reihl and his Amish counterparts may not live “in the world,” but they have a pretty good idea of how to provide what the outside world wants—for a profit. Dilworth points out that the Amish growers in Lancaster County expect to sell $3 million worth of their produce to big buyers across the U.S. by 2025.
We can’t say enough good things about Miles Dilworth’s informative and entertaining article in the November 26, 2023 issue of Daily Mail.com.UK. Visit for the writing, stay for the photos.
To visit the website of Lancaster County Cannabis, simply click on the link below.
Cannabis and Highway Safety
In a move that may contribute to highway safety and address the concerns of cannabis advocates, the state of Minnesota has launched a pilot program that will use a different method to test for driver impairment. The method tests a driver’s saliva rather than their blood.
What could make this type of testing a game changer, if it works, is that a blood test can show the presence of cannabis long after the effects of the substance have worn off. A saliva test can provide evidence of more immediate use, and when used with other behavioral measures, could be a more accurate way to infer a driver is driving while impaired.
Cannabis advocates have long held that using a blood test alone to determine if a driver is “under the influence” can be misleading, since it can take days for cannabis to be fully processed by the body’s metabolism. That means that at the time of the test, the driver may no longer be feeling the effects of the cannabis.
According to TG Branfalt, writing for Ganjapreneur, KMSP-TV, the FOX affiliate in Minneapolis, reports that Minnesota’s Office of Traffic Safety (OTS) is pilot testing a saliva-based roadside cannabis impairment test. The test will screen for six different compounds, including cannabis and opioids.
Branfalt writes that at this point the pilot program will be used for data-gathering purposes only, so the samples will be voluntary and won’t be used to make arrests or suspend or revoke driver’s licenses.
Said Mike Hanson, director of OTS, officials are “not looking to find somebody who used 10 days or 14 days ago” but rather for people who “used within the last couple of hours.”
Added Hanson, “We’re going to get a good sampling not only in metro areas, but also in the greater Minnesota areas that will give us an idea of how prevalent drug impaired driving is on our roads.”
What often gets lost in debates about the public safety aspects of legalizing recreational cannabis is that no one, including cannabis advocates, wants to encounter someone who’s behind the wheel of a car when their ability to drive is impaired—whether by cannabis, alcohol or other drugs.
This saliva-based test seems to be a way to put the process on the right road, one that can lead to greater safety.
To learn more, we suggest reading TG Branfalt’s article in the November 24, 2023 issue of Ganjapreneur.com.
www.ganjapreneur.com/minnesota-launching-saliva-based-drugged-driving-test-pilot-program/?
Cannabis and Cancer Pain
For the majority of cancer patients, dealing with pain is a fact of life. For some, that pain is what’s described as refractory pain, meaning it doesn’t respond to treatment. Experts say this kind of pain often leads to a variety of unmet clinical needs.
Fortunately, a new study indicates adding cannabis to a patient’s treatment program may provide some relief.
In the study, a team of researchers affiliated with the Institute of Pain Medicine, Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care Medicine at Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Tel Aviv, Israel and several other research institutions, studied a group of 252 refractory cancer-related pain patients. Of these,126 patients (55 percent) were treated with medical cannabis and 105 patients (45 percent) were not.
According to an abstract of the study, most patients involved received pain management from their oncologist, not a pain specialist. The medical cannabis treatment was mainly started for pain relief and to address sleep difficulties and anorexia.
The research team reported that about 70 percent of patients reported subjective improvement after treatment with medical cannabis, with almost 40 percent reporting a significant improvement in coping with their illness.
Side effects noted from the medical cannabis were generally mild, with fatigue and dizziness being the most common (21.78 percent and 23.46 percent, respectively). No patient required dedicated medical care for side effects.
The research team noted in its conclusion that managing refractory cancer pain and its side effects (loss of sleep, loss of appetite, etc.) can necessitate innovative approaches. The team contends this study demonstrates that medical cannabis can effectively improve symptoms in patients who don’t respond to other forms of pain management—and do so with what it describes as “favorable safety profiles for this vulnerable population.”
The study was published in the BMJ journal BMJ Supportive and Palliative Care. The BMJ journals are affiliated with the British Medical Association.
To learn more, simply click on the link below.
spcare.bmj.com/content/early/2023/11/15/spcare-2023-004421.abstract
Senior Cannabis Digest is compiled and edited by Joe Kohut and John Kohut. You can reach them at joe.kohut@gmail.com and at 347-528-8753.
