Joe Rannazzisi is a man of strong passions who admits that he has a temper. For more than a decade, he was the frontman in the government’s war against opioid abuse. As head of the Office of Diversion Control for the Drug Enforcement Administration, he was responsible for cracking down on doctors, pharmacies, drug manufacturers…
DetailsBOZEMAN, Mont. — When Tyler Smith was diagnosed with testicular cancer, medical marijuana didn’t feel like a valid option. He took opioids to manage the pain of nine months of chemotherapy. To balance the side effects, he took anti-nausea medication. When he stopped wanting food, he couldn’t find anything that helped. “I knew cannabis might…
DetailsWASHINGTON – A coalition of police chiefs and prosecutors from the nation’s biggest cities implored the Trump administration Wednesday not to return to the “lock ’em all up” crime-fighting policies of the 1980s and 1990s and not to waste resources on low-level drug offenders, as Attorney General Jeff Sessions has advocated recently. The Law Enforcement…
DetailsAn online payment company has shut down a fundraising campaign set up to support cannabis cultivators who’ve been impacted by the deadly wildfires in Northern California, saying marijuana remains illegal under federal law. WePay, which processes payments for the crowdfunding site YouCaring.com, is refusing to pass along more than $13,000 in donations the California Growers…
DetailsThe Emerald Triangle is awash with cannabis, environmental groups are saying the land cannot sustain more grows. Humboldt County is awash with marijuana. This is a known fact, disputed by nobody, a rare point of complete concurrence between the police and the cannabis-growing erstwhile outlaws who have spent the last few decades among the verdant…
DetailsGermany is proceeding down the path to officially grow its own medical cannabis crops. Medical use became legal this year, along with a federal mandate for cheap access. That means that public health insurance companies, which cover 90% of Germans, are now firmly on the hook if not front line of the cannabis efficacy issue.…
DetailsIn April 2016, at the height of the deadliest drug epidemic in U.S. history, Congress effectively stripped the Drug Enforcement Administration of its most potent weapon against large drug companies suspected of spilling prescription narcotics onto the nation’s streets. By then, the opioid war had claimed 200,000 lives, more than three times the number of…
DetailsAn oil extraction facility is housing the Red Cross volunteers working to help those affected by the Northern California fires. Everyone is totally silent as we pass through the police barrier on the edge of the Coffey Park neighborhood in the days following a massive fire that consumed the Santa Rosa, California suburb in a…
DetailsThe National Football League, still in political crosshairs over whether players should take a knee during the national anthem, is throwing its weight behind another cause in Washington’s debate over racial inequality: Criminal-justice reform. The NFL’s spokesman said on Monday that the league has decided to endorse a bipartisan bill to reduce mandatory minimum sentences…
DetailsWomen Grow, the national organization celebrating entrepreneurial women in cannabis, announces the formation of its newest chapter in Los Angeles.
DetailsLast year, through a sneaky bureaucratic maneuver, the DEA took steps to deny medical cannabis patients critical access to CBD oil, despite research that shows promising therapeutic affects for a myriad of different afflictions. Even while medical cannabis gains scientific legitimacy, it still faces political scrutiny. Many medical marijuana patients turn to CBD oil as an alternative to smoking.…
DetailsThe following editorial appeared in The Baltimore Sun on Monday, Oct. 16: How ironic is it that conservatives who routinely criticize the federal government’s allegedly heavy-handed intrusions into state and local affairs seem to have no problem with such interventions when the overreach happens to advance policies dear to their own hearts? This year we’ve…
Details
