Welcome to Senior Cannabis Digest. This week we look at a program to make medical marijuana more affordable for seniors, a new way to test for impairment from cannabis use, a cautionary tale about traveling with CBD and more. Enjoy.
Special Benefits for Seniors
Some mature consumers in Pennsylvania may soon find that their medical marijuana is more affordable.The state Department of Health has launched a pilot program that will provide $50 a month in financial assistance to nearly 1,400 senior citizens. The purpose of the payment is to help them cover the cost of medical marijuana.
According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, under the pilot program, the nearly 1,400 medical marijuana patients enrolled in the state’s PACE and PACENET programs will get $50 a month until next June to help them pay for their medical marijuana.
Medical Marijuana Program Director Laura Mentch announced the pilot program at the quarterly meeting of the state’s Medical Marijuana Advisory Board. According to Ms. Mentch, the average patient spends about $275 a month on medical marijuana.
The Department of Health has previously indicated that about a quarter of medical marijuana patients (23 percent) qualify as low-income. Ms. Mentch said Tuesday that there are 423,443 active patient certifications.
According to the reporting by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette‘s CAPITOLWIRE.COM, the payments are the first step toward establishing a third phase for the financial assistance program authorized to help low-income medical marijuana patients afford the drug. Because insurance companies don’t include medical marijuana in their prescription drug coverage, medical marijuana patients are left to pay the full cost of medical marijuana when they visit a dispensary.
To learn more, we urge you to read the article that appeared in the November 25, 2022 issue of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.com.
Travel Tips
It’s a story we’ve told before, but it bears repeating. If you are a mature consumer and your holiday plans involve travel, it’s wise to know before you go. Possessing cannabis when crossing state lines or international borders can be a risky proposition.
Case in point: a Canadian man may face a lifetime ban from entering the U.S. because border agents found a bottle of CBD oil in his luggage.
According to Joel Ballard, reporting for CBC News, the man frequently crosses the border by car for business. However, during his latest trip he was chosen for a random inspection. During the search a border agent found an old bottle of cannabidiol oil, or CBD oil. The man, Jonathan Houweling, told Ballard that he had tossed it in his car’s center console back in 2019 and forgot about it.
Cannabidiol (CBD) is a non-psychoactive compound found in marijuana. It is not a controlled substance in the U.S., as long as it contains less than 0.3 percent tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC. According to U.S. authorities, Houweling’s CBD oil tested positive for THC, although he claims the authorities didn’t provide proof despite multiple requests for it.
Houweling believes the lifetime ban may put an end to his special events business. Said Houweling, “I simply can’t see a way to make it work in the future if I can’t be there in person. It would have to fold.” He was traveling for Christmas festival contracts in Chicago and New York when he was detained at the border.
This story raises two issues. First, always make sure you check the level of THC in any CBD product you purchase and be aware that testing procedures are not infallible. If possible, try to verify the THC level listed on the label.
Second, when traveling outside of the U.S.—or even across state lines—make sure you know the laws governing cannabis products at your destination. A product that may be legal in one jurisdiction—even a CBD product—may not be legal in another.
Ballard notes that Houweling has since applied for a special U.S. entry waiver which would allow him to enter the U.S.
To learn more, we suggest reading Joel Ballard’s article in the November 23, 2022 issue of CBC News.com.
www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-man-lifetime-ban-entering-us-cbd-oil-1.6660816
Crime Watch
No matter how long they wait, chances are the burglars who stole a batch of gummies from a dispensary in Portland, Maine will never get a “buzz” from their loot.
That’s because the gummies were fakes.
That’s the word from Graham Abbot who covered the story for Ganjapreneur. It seems the burglars who broke into the Sweet Dirt dispensary in Portland, Maine, made off with boxes of fake gummies and display packaging after smashing some of the shop’s display cases.
ThePortland Press Herald reported that Portland police said only display products were taken and that none of the stolen products contained THC or other cannabinoids. The law enforcement investigation is ongoing.
Founded in 2015 by a Maine-based husband and wife team, Sweet Dirt operates three retail locations in Maine. Amanda Abelmann, the company’s Senior Vice President of Operations, told reporters the adult-use retailer’s actual cannabis products — and other valuable merchandise — had been locked in a safe at the time of the burglary.
Said Sweet Dirt CEO Jim Henry, “This happened because someone was misinformed. It was a failed attempt… This is a teachable moment to let the community at large know this is not something of an unsafe environment. But it’s not an easy target if you’re going to smash and grab.”
Abbott noted in his article that since cannabis industry operators are denied most banking services due to the federal prohibition of cannabis, dispensaries operate on a cash only basis. This often makes them prime targets for robbers.
To learn more, we suggest you read Graham Abbott’s article in the November 28, 2022 issue of Ganjapreneur.com.
www.ganjapreneur.com/burglars-steal-fake-gummies-during-dispensary-smash-and-grab/?
Cannabis Legalization and Adolescent Use
The next time your Uncle Bub or Aunt Doris, or even that nosey neighbor next door, say they’re not opposed to legalizing “that pot,” but they are worried about “the children,” tell them the children are doing just fine.
According to a new study funded by a leading federal drug agency, state-level marijuana legalization is not associated with increased youth cannabis use.
That’s the word from Kyle Jaeger who covered the story for Marijuana Moment. He reports that an article, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine looked at data from three longitudinal studies on past-year cannabis consumption and frequency of use among adolescents from 1999 to 2020 in Oregon, New York and Washington State.
Jaeger noted that the study, which received funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), showed that “youth who spent more of their adolescence under legalization were no more or less likely to have used cannabis at age 15 years than adolescents who spent little or no time under legalization.”
Jaeger also cited another study by researchers at the University of Washington, Colorado State University and Oregon Social Learning Center that also debunked the argument that legalization of “adult use” cannabis would lead more underage people to use cannabis.
To learn much more about this and other studies with similar findings, we urge you to read Kyle Jaeger’s excellent article in the November 24, 2022 issue of Marijuana Moment.net. As always, his work is first rate.
Cannabis and Public Safety
Finding a reliable way to establish and measure impairment due to cannabis consumption would be welcomed by employers, law enforcement and cannabis advocates alike, since safety in the workplace and on the road is always an issue when questions about legalization are debated.
For starters, even with alcohol, the best anyone can do is measure something, such as a person’s blood alcohol level, that is an indication that impairment is likely. Measuring impairment resulting from cannabis use is more complicated.
Fortunately, a new device may change all that.
According to Laurel Leaf, writing for Cannabis.net, since alcohol is highly water soluble and stays in the blood for some time, estimating alcohol impairment in the brain from blood alcohol level is considered reasonably accurate.
THC, on the other hand, is more readily absorbed in fat or oil than in water. That makes estimating brain concentration and resulting impairment more challenging.
Ms. Leaf also notes that blood concentration of THC drops rapidly after smoking stops because no more THC gets into the blood circulation, and what’s left in the blood is distributed to fatty tissue and remains there for an extended period. However, small amounts of THC do slowly drain back into the bloodstream over time, resulting in a constant low blood concentration of THC.
She adds that this low level of THC in the blood is insufficient to create the concentration required for impairment in the brain. Because THC in the blood might be from either past or current usage, it is impossible to distinguish between the two or deduce impairment.
However, thanks to a new perspective and new technology, that all may be changing. A company called Gaize’s recently announced that it has tested a portable, non-invasive testing apparatus to assess pupillary reflex and eye movement response alterations as a way to measure impairment from cannabis use.
According to Leaf, the Gaize technology is a customized virtual reality (VR) headgear with built in eye-tracking sensors. It runs a battery of computerized ocular movement and pupillary response tests while recording high-resolution eye-tracking data and video. To assess active impairment from cannabis usage, this data can be analyzed using machine learning and statistical methods.
An initial trial of the technology on 350 subjects who had consumed legal cannabis was recently carried out in collaboration with Dicentra, a Contract Research Organization (CRO) based in Toronto, Canada.
Gaize Chief Technology Officer Rob Lass, characterized the study’s findings as “excellent,” and said, “We were able to collect crucial insights into how cannabis impairment shows in eye movement based on the data we gathered, and execute algorithmic modification in readiness for the commercial launch.”
Lass added that Gaize expects the device to be available in late 2022.
You can learn more by reading Laurel Leaf’s detailed and insightful reporting in the November 2, 2022 issue of Cannabis.net.
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.
