Cannabis couriers are rolling from the Golden Gate to Pacific Beach.

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We could have told you this all along. But, now there’s proof: Medical cannabis users are healthier, happier, and more satisfied with life than non-users, according to a new cross-sectional study which will soon be published in the Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research journal. 

Hundreds of research studies have already reported that medical cannabis can effectively treat specific medical conditions including chronic pain, epilepsy, anxiety, and depression — and even slow the growth of cancer. While studies on these specific use-cases continue, the researchers for this report chose to focus on the broader picture instead of specifics.

“Despite widespread legalization, the impact of medicinal cannabis use on patient level health and quality of life has not been carefully evaluated,” the study authors explain. “The objective of this study was to characterize self-reported demographics, health characteristics, quality of life, and health care utilization of Cannabis Users compared with Controls.”

To conduct the study, researchers used ongoing web-based surveys to determine the overall health and well-being of medical marijuana users and non-users between April 2016 and February 2018. Researchers recruited 1,276 subjects who were either registered caregivers or patients suffering from at least one diagnosed health condition. Each of these patients was registered with the Realm of Caring Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to medicinal cannabis research and education.

Out of the subject pool, 808 of the subjects used medical marijuana or low-THC hemp products, while the remaining 468 subjects did not. Each subject was asked to self-assess their quality of life, pain, sleep, anxiety, and depression, as well as to report their ongoing use of non-cannabis medications. Subjects were then asked to respond to follow-up surveys every three months after the initial survey. Only one-third of subjects completed all of the follow-up surveys, however.

An analysis of the data revealed that medical cannabis users reported significantly better quality of life, greater health satisfaction, improved sleep, and a lower average pain severity than non-users. They were also significantly less depressed and anxious than the control group. Cannabis users also reported using fewer prescription medications, and were less likely to have been admitted to the hospital in the month prior to the survey.

“This study shows clearly that cannabinoids have a very positive effect on health outcomes across the board among all age groups and demographics,” said Jonathan Hoggard, PhD, CEO of Realm of Caring, to Grit Daily. “This publication will be the first of many based on the detailed findings of this extensive data set. Perhaps the most dramatic finding in this study was that medicinal cannabis use was associated with 39 percent fewer ER visits and 46 percent fewer hospital admissions.”

The study authors were able to find the most noticeable impact among subjects who were not using medical marijuana at the start of the trial, but began using these treatments in the midst of the study. After they began using medical cannabis, these subjects reported health and well-being improvements over their initial surveys. 

“People felt better when they started [consuming cannabis],” said lead researcher Ryan Vandrey, PhD, associate professor in the Behavioral Pharmacology Research Unit at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, to Grit Daily. “That is a powerful signal.” Vandrey also noted that some of the subjects said they had previously been using a prescription medicine to treat their illness, but that cannabis was able to provide the same relief with fewer side-effects.

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Swiss lawmakers are working to approve a pilot program that would allow temporary cultivation and sales of cannabis for adult use, but full legalization likely won’t happen anytime soon. 

Earlier this month, the lower chamber of Switzerland’s Federal Assembly approved a bill that would create a pilot program for researching the viability of large-scale cannabis legalization. If the bill becomes law, adults at least 18-years-old will be able to legally buy and use Swiss-grown organic pot if they enroll to participate in a five-year experiment.

Each of these participants must agree to have their health regularly monitored during the course of the experiment. The government will also notify each participant’s school or employer that they are using weed legally. Participants will be allowed to use this legal weed in the privacy of their own homes, but are prohibited from smoking in public.

The program will license a limited number of cannabis growers to provide legal weed for the experiment. Any producer licensed for this program must agree to follow the country’s strict standards for growing organic plants and must cap THC levels at 20 percent. 

“This scientific process is expected to last five years, which could be extended [by] two more, and the evidence collected from it is supposed to provide scientific arguments for a national debate on the opportunity to legally regulate cannabis for adult consumers,” explained Swiss drug policy expert Simon Anderfuhren-Biget, PhD, to Marijuana Business Daily.

“This is a positive step toward the normalization of cannabis in the country,” Anderfuhren-Biget continued. “However, this legislative process is still ongoing and somewhat uncertain. And according to this political agenda, even in the best scenario, I would be surprised to see distribution before 2022.”

Before the program begins, the Swiss Council of States must still debate and approve the legislation. The upper chamber could impose new restrictions on the bill, or reject it outright, but insiders still believe the bill will succeed. Conservative lawmakers already tried to impose several restrictions on the bill in the lower chamber, but each of these amendments was ultimately rejected.

If lawmakers do greenlight the program, recreational weed could be made available to test subjects by 2022. After five years, lawmakers will use the data collected on these test subjects to debate whether full adult-use legalization is viable for the entire country. If the program gets a two-year extension, however, the final debate over full legalization will not occur until 2030. And even if adult-use is approved that year, it is likely that it would still take years for a licensed and regulated legal weed market to fully open.

“On the other hand,” said Anderfuhren-Biget to Marijuana Business Daily, “Switzerland is known for its democracy, and a popular initiative at the constitutional level or a parliamentary proposal to modify the drug law could drastically speed up the process.”

Switzerland’s slow and cautious approach to cannabis reform is on pace with the rest of Europe. So far, the only European country that has announced concrete plans to legalize adult-use is the tiny nation of Luxembourg. The Netherlands is also conducting a pilot experiment where licensed cultivators provide legal weed to the country’s existing cannabis coffee shops, and France and Denmark are both conducting medical cannabis pilot programs, too. 

The Lord of the Rings saga might be a big-budget film classic today, but it has always had stoner ties — even when it was only in print. The tough, hilarious, and kind Gandalf, a wizard of Middle Earth, is a character most notable to the weed community, owed to his liberal use of what author J.R.R. Tolkien called “pipe-weed.” 

According to the Lord of the Rings Fandom Wiki, it’s a plant with “sweet-smelling flowers” that the Hobbits, like main characters Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, cultivated, smoked, and traded with neighbors. To some, it sounds like a tobacco product, while others point to its floral description, hinting that pipe-weed might be more like our own weed, but the true definition may have been muddied by the movies. 

Like any good fiction writer, Tolkien could have simply been making up his own plant altogether. However, considering his heyday took place during the mid-century era, tobacco is the more likely subject. 

Pipe-weed from Middle Earth to Hollywood

It’s really film director Peter Jackson’s doing that so many thought of the “Halfling’s Leaf” as a fantasy cannabis analog. He plugged a quip from head wizard Saruman to Gandalf, alluding to “cloudy judgment” post-pipe-weed consumption in the first film, The Fellowship of the Ring.

But it’s the prologue of The Fellowship book itself that seals the canon argument. Tolkien writes of his beloved Hobbits: 

“They imbibed or inhaled, through pipes of clay or wood, the smoke of the burning leaves of a herb, which they called pipe-weed or leaf, a variety probably of Nicotiana. A great deal of mystery surrounds the origin of this particular custom or ‘art’ as the Hobbits preferred to call it.”

Canna-fans need not despair. Just because the books hint at tobacco and the movies hint at weed does not mean that countless cultivators didn’t come through with their own homages to Middle Earth and the Hobbits’ love of pipe-weed. 

Gandalf’s pipe-weed in cannabis culture

There are now a dozen or more strains named after characters, fictional pipe-weed brands from the Shire like Old Toby and Longbottom Leaf, and of course, the wizard himself has Gandalf OG.

Additionally, smoking cannabis out of a “Gandalf pipe” is something of a stoner rite of passage or bucket list item to be crossed off. Numerous glass pipes are shaped similarly to the Gandalf’s pipe-weed piece and are pretty easy to find in most glass shops.

If you’re a lifelong fan or just coming around to these nine-plus hour epics, pipe-weed is as integral to Hobbit life as it is to ours. No matter what effects you imagine come from a big drag of Gandalf’s pipe, you can enjoy the story behind the smoke rings, because he is hands down the Lord of those rings.

Featured image by Thomas Schweighofer on Unsplash

The post Gandalf and his pipe-weed … is it actually weed? appeared first on Weedmaps News.

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Sometimes, it can feel like cannabis is all but legalized across the entire United States. With the legalization of medical and/or recreational cannabis in more than half of the 50 states, and decriminalization laws on the books in many big cities without statewide legalization, it is easier to find good (and legal) weed than ever before. But as racist cannabis policing continues into the era of legalization, it is important to recognize the prejudices that spurred prohibition in the first place, and also remember that cannabis reform primarily benefits white Americans while other demographic groups continue to be persecuted for the plant. 

First reported by Marijuana Moment, a newly-published digital archive from the Library of Congress (LOC) compiles a slew of vintage newspaper articles from across the US that highlight racist propaganda through the lens of cannabis criminalization.

“From the late 19th to early 20th century, newspapers reported the early rise of marihuana (known today as marijuana),” the Library of Congress states. “Alarming reports of the menace of marihuana reach the United States press. Tales of alleged atrocities fueled by the drug are often tied to anti-Mexican propaganda.”

Tracking media from 1897 to 1915, the LOC historic reference features articles from every corner of the US, almost all of them containing racist slurs describing cannabis as a “dangerous Mexican weed” that had “loco’ed” the entire nation. In 1905, a New York newspaper published a report that cannabis had been made illegal in Mexico, once again harping on the plant’s supposed relation to violence and insanity.

“This deadly drug is sought by the soldiers in the army,” the New York Tribune article reads. “It is smoked like tobacco and the user of it soon goes wildly insane. It is stated that insanity in the army has greatly increased of late on account of the use of this plant. The effects of the first few smokes is so soothing and pleasant that the habit becomes firmly established, and the user of the poison will almost sacrifice his life to obtain a supply of the drug.”

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More than 100 years after that article was written, cannabis prohibition is falling out of favor in voting booths, state legislatures, and even some corners of Congress. But while new dispensaries open in states on the West and East Coasts, police departments from Colorado to New York continue to target black and brown people for cannabis policing. As we move deeper into the American green rush, it is important to remember that cannabis prohibition was based entirely on racism, and that legalization will not succeed without active anti-racism in every facet. 

The Library of Congress is considered one of America’s most pristine historical archives, and it recently added Dr. Dre’s The Chronic to the National Recording Registry. The fact that the institution is putting a spotlight on the country’s long history of racially-motivated prohibition is a step in the right direction, but history will repeat itself unless more direct action is taken to change how cannabis laws are enforced in the present. 

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Police don’t merely enforce unjust laws. They help create them, protect them, and profit from them.

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Governor John Bel Edwards officially signed the expansion into law!

The governor of Colorado may now pardon those with low-level marijuana convictions.

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Cannabis can increase intimacy during sex by reducing anxiety or feelings of shame, according to a new study recently published in the Culture, Health, & Sexuality journal.

Over the past decade, a number of studies have found that cannabis can increase intimacy, help people have sex more often, and make sexual experiences more enjoyable — especially for women. The present study confirms these findings, but adds a unique twist. In most of the prior reports, the majority of research subjects have identified as straight, but the current study focuses exclusively on gay and bisexual subjects.

Researchers from the University of British Columbia recruited 41 men between the ages of 15 and 30 from the Vancouver area and interviewed them about their experiences with cannabis and sex. None of the subjects identified as straight: 3 of them identified as trans, 36 as cisgender, and the other two did not identify with a specific gender. The researchers interviewed each subject for one to two hours between January and December of 2018.

Nearly every participant in the study said that using cannabis before sex helped them feel less anxious during the experience, lowering their inhibitions and allowing for increased feelings of intimacy. Many subjects also said that weed helped them deal with anxiety connected to their own physical appearance, especially related to meeting new sex partners on hookup apps like Grindr or SCRUFF.

“In our study, we found that the use of cannabis can allow men to access a deeper sense of sexual freedom and intimacy in a context where same-sex sex is historically stigmatized,” the study authors wrote in an article for The Conversation. “In other words, the sexualized use of cannabis can help sexual and gender minority men overcome feelings of anxiety and shame resulting from internalized homophobia, biphobia and/or transphobia, so that they can more fully enjoy the sex they want.”

These feelings of anxiety and shame can prevent some gay, bisexual, or trans people from fully letting their guard down during sex, but most of the study subjects said weed helped them overcome these feelings and become more intimate with their partners. One of the subjects told researchers that he felt “a lot of guilt and shame” about discovering his sexual identity later in life, but said that cannabis helped him let go of these feelings during sex.

Some of the subjects also reported that weed increased their physical enjoyment of sex and even helped some enjoy experiences that had previously not been enjoyable for them. “I’ve been having anal sex for, like, probably a decade, but until very, very, very recently while having an edible [i.e. ingesting cannabis], I’ve never actually liked it… It’s never been better than a six out of ten,” one subject told the researchers, according to Insider.

“I’m actually enjoying this for like the first time, solidly, like a nine out of ten [after taking the edible]!” the subject continued. “And then the next time I had sex without an edible, I was enjoying it as an eight out of ten. I’m like, ‘Huh?!’ So it changed something in me.”

The findings of the study are extremely limited, as researchers only recruited a small number of men from one specific geographical region. The study does suggest that cannabis could be a powerful therapeutic tool for helping marginalized groups overcome sexual stigmas, however. 

The researchers believe that cannabis can also help influence people to engage in safer sex. The authors wrote that “the sexualized use of crystal methamphetamine (meth) by gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men in a practice often referred to as ‘chemsex’ or ‘party ‘n’ play’ has been identified as a key driver of HIV infection, depression, anxiety, and suicide.” Cannabis can also increase pleasure and reduce inhibitions during sex, though, and without any of the risks associated with meth, ecstasy, or other chemicals.

The authors also note that weed “can function as a kind of social lubricant and break down socially conditioned boundaries, enabling disinhibitions while still allowing people to stay safe and follow public health directives.” During the current COVID-19 pandemic, health agencies are urging people to turn to online sexual experiences, rather than in-person encounters, and the authors believe that pot can help make these virtual sessions more enjoyable.

“Whether it’s because of a pandemic or due to harms associated with chemsex, the need to keep sexual and gender minority men safe remains vital,” the authors conclude.

In this op-ed, Taneeshia Thomas discusses the challenges of getting a license for a legal cannabis business while still dealing with the repercussions of the War On Drugs.