Welcome to Senior Cannabis Digest. This week we look at a hotel where you can order cannabis from room service, why consumers grow their own, the relationship between schizophrenia and the problematic use of highly potent marijuana and more. Enjoy.
The Shape of Things to Come
There may come a day in the not too distant future when New Yorkers can pop into their neighborhood bar and place an order with a budtender instead of a bartender.
According to Lisa Fickenscher, reporting for the New York Post, Jimmy Haber, CEO of BLT Restaurant Group, which runs Italian eateries Casa Nonna and The Florentine, has ” a handshake agreement ” with Toast, a Colorado-based cannabis company, to help him open marijuana lounges in the Big Apple.
Said Haber, “We are all novices in New York, and Toast is supplying the expertise so we can offer a first class experience.” The Aspen-based company is known for its rainbow cookies with CBD-infused chocolate and hemp extract oils.
Fickenscher noted that by law the proposed lounges will not be allowed to serve alcohol. Whether they can serve food to customers with the munchies remains to be seen.
To learn more you can read Lisa Fickenscher‘s article in the July 22, 2021 issue of the New York Post—and don’t forget to tip your budtender.
nypost.com/2021/07/22/jimmy-haber-of-blt-steak-to-open-cannabis-lounges-in-nyc/
Travel Trends
We know Covid-related restrictions keep changing, making it difficult to make travel plans. Still, there are several cannabis-related travel stories mature consumers may want to file away for future consideration.
For starters, Mirela Iverac, writing for Gothamist, reports small amounts of marijuana found on passengers in New York’s airports are no longer being seized by local authorities.
Lisa Farbstein, a spokesperson at the Transportation Security Administration, said travelers will only be arrested if they carry more than three ounces of marijuana on them. She added the agency’s officers aren’t actively looking for marijuana, but warns they will notify the police if they find it since possession remains a violation of federal law. TSA officers don’t have the power to arrest travelers, but can notify local police agencies.
Mirela Iverac‘s article appeared in the July 24, 2021 issue of Gothamist.
gothamist.com/news/authorities-no-longer-seizing-under-three-ounces-marijuana-new-york-airports
In another story that demonstrates how “the times they are a changin’,” AZBigmedia reports the Clarendon Hotel and Spa, a landmark Four Star boutique hotel in Central Phoenix, has announced it is now Arizona’s First Cannabis Friendly Hotel. Guests will have the opportunity to book cannabis friendly rooms by calling the hotel at 602-252-7363 or using the website Bud and Breakfast at https://www.budandbreakfast.com/.
The hotel’s cannabis sleeping rooms are located on the west side of the hotel property where guests can partake in edibles, flower and vape products which have been purchased at a local dispensary. To shop for cannabis, the hotel will offer a car service to drive guests to a dispensary.
In addition, Chef Derek Upton, known as Arizona Cannabis Chef, and featured on Netflix’s Cooked with Cannabis and Food Network’s first ever Chopped 420 is available to provide in-room cannabis infused dinners.
To learn more, visit http://www.goclarendon.com or go to the story in AZBigmedia by clicking on the link that follows.
azbigmedia.com/lifestyle/clarendon-hotel-becomes-arizonas-first-cannabis-friendly-hotel/?
A similar service will soon be offered by a small, independent hotel in Fortuna, California. Starting August 1st, guests at The Redwood Riverwalk Hotel will be able to order cannabis products from a menu in their room and have them delivered to the front desk for pick up.
According to Javier Hasse, reporting for Benzinga, the service is offered through a partnership with Element 7’s Rio Dell location.
You can learn more by reading Javier Hasse’s reporting in the July 26, 2021 issue of Benzinga.
Cannabis and Schizophrenia
While a growing number of mature consumers report medical cannabis offers relief from a variety of painful conditions and an ever increasing number of states have legalized cannabis for recreational purposes, clearly it is not for everyone.
Case in point, a new study from Denmark cites an increase in the number of cases of schizophrenia linked to what it calls “the problematic use of marijuana.” Researchers say schizophrenia diagnoses in the country associated with cannabis use have increased to 8 percent since 2010.
The study does not state that using marijuana necessarily leads to schizophrenia. According to Katie Hunt, reporting on the finding for CNN, many researchers hypothesize that cannabis use may be a “component cause,” which interacts with other risk factors, to cause the condition and the association between schizophrenia and cannabis use is particularly driven by heavy use of particularly potent forms of the drug.
Terrie Moffitt, a professor and chair in Social Behaviour & Development of the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience at King’s College London acknowledged “there are far more recreational cannabis users who manage cannabis well than cannabis-dependent users who cannot manage it.”
You can learn more by reading Katie Hunt’s article in the July 26, 2021 edition of CNN.com.
www.cnn.com/2021/07/22/health/marijuana-schizophrenia-study-wellness/index.html
Cannabis Quote of the Week
“For a law to be respected, it must be respectable… Marijuana, as I understand it, is less addictive than alcohol. So why is alcohol legal and marijuana isn’t?”…I’m in the philosophy department. By criminalizing [cannabis], it has huge negative manifestations, not only for the individuals who get trapped in that system, but also for society. We want a society that empowers people to realize their potential and contribute, but with these laws you block out millions of people.”—Charles Koch.
Charles Koch is best known as an American billionaire businessman and philanthropist and long-time sponsor of conservative causes. As of April 2021, he was ranked as the 15th-richest person in the world on Bloomberg Billionaires Index, with an estimated net worth of $63.1 billion. He has also become an advocate of legalizing cannabis at the federal level.
According to Will Yakowicz, reporting for Forbes, Koch’s political advocacy group, Americans For Prosperity, has joined other organizations to form the Cannabis Freedom Alliance, a group that is lobbying Congress to help lift America’s federal marijuana ban.
This suggests he is now on a first name basis with Snoop Dogg, who is also a member of the Alliance. We presume stranger things have happened, although what they may be escape us at the moment.
As a staunch libertarian, Koch sees cannabis prohibition as a basic infringement on personal freedom, as well as a destructive public policy that adds to America’s mass-incarceration problem.
Koch says his philosophy is simple: Prohibition creates more problems for a country with a jail and prison population that has soared to more than 2 million.
He believes the U.S. should have learned from the “nightmare” of alcohol prohibition a century ago and has committed to using his name and nearly $25 million of his $45 billion fortune to influence criminal-justice reform and legalization by the end of 2021.
To learn more we urge you to read Will Yakowicz’s insightful and revealing interview with Charles Koch. It appeared in the July 27, 2021 issue of Forbes Magazine.
Stats of the Week
There are several numbers that caught our eye this week. The first two come from Alex Halperin writing for WeedWeek. He reported that the publication Insider found that a record 167 organizations hired both Republican and Democratic affiliated firms to lobby Congress on cannabis-related issues in the second quarter of 2021.
He also reported that investment bank Morgan Stanley has paid $100,000 year to date to lobby on cannabis banking issues. One assumes it sees legal cannabis as a good investment.
To learn more we suggest you read Alex Halperin’s reporting in WeeWeek’s July 22, 2021 issue.
www.weedweek.net/news/amazon-tobacco-and-pharma-lobby-on-weed/
The other figure that we found interesting is 6 percent. According to the folks at New Frontier Data, that’s the percentage of cannabis consumers who—when permitted by law—grow their own flower.
While that may not sound like a large number of consumers, those who do it are fiercely loyal to their own product. For example, Noah Tomares, a research analyst for New Frontier Data, reported that those who grow their own tend to smoke their own. In a recent study nearly three-quarters (72 percent) of home growers queried reported they consumed either nothing but their home grown or mostly what they have grown.
When asked why they grow their own, many said quality is a key consideration. Nearly one-third (32 percent) grow to avoid worries about contaminants such as pesticides, while 44 percent feel that they grow better-quality flower than they could find elsewhere. For others, it’s a matter of convenience (52 percent), or cost (46 percent ) and a larger majority (70 percent) told investigators they do it because they enjoy growing it as a hobby.
More information is available in Noah Tomares’s article in the July 26, 2021 edition of CannaBit, a publication of New Frontier Data.
newfrontierdata.com/cannabis-insights/for-many-cannabis-consumers-home-is-where-the-grow-is/
Senior Cannabis Digest is compiled and edited by Joe Kohut and John Kohut. You can reach them at joe.kohut@gmail.com or at 347-528-8753.
