Efectos de la Marihuana

Former National Football League (NFL) star Chris Long is speaking out about his cannabis use.

The recently retired Philadelphia Eagles player, 11-year NFL veteran and two-time Super Bowl champion made an appearance on the Dan Patrick Show this week to discuss his consumption of the drug, which he says he uses for pain management and stress.

“I certainly enjoyed my fair share on a regular basis through my career,” Long said during his appearance on the show. “If not for that, I’m not as capable of coping with the stresses of… the NFL life.”

Long pointed out what he sees as the hypocrisy of players using alcohol, the consumption of which is permitted by the NFL when players are off the clock, versus the ban on cannabis use.

“We should be headed to a place where we allow players to enjoy what I would not even call a drug,” Long said. “You know, it’s far less dangerous than guzzling a fifth of alcohol and going out after a game. Chances are the player won’t even make it to the club (laughs) to do this sort of thing that we all kind of wag our finger at when we hear about a guy getting in a fight or a DUI. You’re never going to read about him sitting on the couch and binge-watching ‘Game of Thrones’ again.”

Long claims that cannabis is rampant in the league, and his view is that the NFL doesn’t so much care about cannabis consumption as the appearance of propriety.

“I’ve heard many NFL executives and coaches not give a damn about whether or not their players smoke weed,” said Long.  “They just care if a guy is dumb enough to get caught, because players know the test is coming. Believe it or not, the testing period (incredibly!) begins on Apr. 20 and continues through Aug. 9. That’s when players are tested for what the league calls ‘substances of abuse’ and marijuana is included in that.”

The NFL has made recent inroads with regard to cannabis research. A new collective bargaining agreement  could mean the end of the league’s prohibition of medical cannabis, possibly by the start of the 2021 season.

Still, critics say the league is late to the party, with numerous current and former players vehemently opposing the current ban.

The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) has announced a multi-year partnership with Canadian cannabis company Aurora to test CBD products on the performance of UFC athlete participants, in pursuit of advancing science to better support the health and wellness of competitors in one of the most physically testing sports on the planet.

The multi-million-dollar deal the companies are calling a “global partnership” will specifically focus on hemp-derived CBD. They hope it will significantly advance clinical science around how hemp-derived CBD impacts athlete recovery, given that the faster and better MMA fighters can recover between training sessions, the bigger a threat to their opponents they will be on fight night.

With the info that comes out of the partnership, Aurora expects to further develop products specifically to fit fighters’ needs and further educate them on best practices revealed in the forthcoming data pool.

Studying CBD’s Effects on Athletic Performance

The research will take place in an unlikely center of scientific progress: Las Vegas. There, the UFC’s sports performance team will actually conduct all the research with athletes that are willing to participate. The main areas research will focus on initially are pain management, inflammation, recovery and mental well-being.

Dr. Jason Dyck, a professor at the University of Alberta and a Canada Research Chair in Molecular Medicine, will take the lead on Aurora’s end for the project. Dyck also serves on the board of Aurora, where he provides oversight into the company’s scientific projects.

UFC President Dana White has had a mixed relationship with cannabis over the years, but times are changing.

“Since the day we opened the Performance Institute, our primary goal was to offer UFC athletes the best possible training, nutrition, and recovery services,” White said in a statement announcing the deal. “This partnership with Aurora is an extension of that goal, and we’re looking forward to collaborating with Aurora to find new ways to improve the health and safety of athletes who compete in UFC.”

Terry Booth, CEO of Aurora, also weighed in on the deal in the statement.

“This global partnership places focus squarely on the health and well-being of UFC’s talented and highly trained athletes,” Booth said. “The Aurora-UFC research partnership creates a global platform to launch targeted educational and awareness campaigns, while creating numerous opportunities to accelerate our global CBD business.”

UFC & CBD: A New Partnership After a Complicated History

Over the last three years, UFC fighters have been dabbling in CBD for recovery openly, since the famous post-fight press conference in August 2016 where Nate Diaz claimed he was smoking a vape pen filled with CBD. Others would claim it wasn’t CBD, and since he had already taken his post-fight drug test, we’ll never know — unless you believe his brother Nick, who claimed it was not CBD. But regardless of what was in that vape, the CBD-in-MMA cat was out of the bag.

Diaz would later receive a public telling off from the U.S. Anti-Doping Association. “It don’t matter,” Diaz told the Bob Costa of MMA, Ariel Helwani, eight months after the original incident. “I banked out in the cannabis industry from it… It was a good move and it was organic.”

These days, a spread of MMA’s biggest names and champions find themselves sponsored by CBD companies. At a Bellator event last fall, Ricardo Arona power bomber, Pride legend and former UFC Light Heavyweight Champion Quinton “Rampage” Jackson credited Nate Diaz with turning him on to CBD. He also credited one of this year’s UFC Hall of Fame class members, Suga Rashad Evans, with hooking him up with a sponsor.

MMAFighting asked Rampage how important CBD is now to fighters.

“I’m glad [Nate Diaz] stood up for us and made it legal for MMA fighters,” Rampage replied. “Dude, it’s incredible. It’s been helping me out a lot.” According to Rampage, the effect has been so significant he’s doing pushups again.

Early this week Kansas Governor Laura Kelly signed Senate Bill 28 into law, which provides an affirmative defense against prosecution for possession of certain cannabidiol products containing tetrahydrocannabinol in specific circumstances.

Senate Bill 28 is also known as “Claire and Lola’s Law” after the daughters of Gwen and Scott Hartley. Both girls were born with microcephaly, a medical condition in which the brain does not develop properly. Unfortunately the condition claimed the life of older sister Claire who died last year. The Hartley’s were the driving force behind the bill, and believe CBD oil could greatly improve surviving daughter Lola’s quality of life – perhaps even extending it.

“We are so incredibly grateful & elated!!!,” said the Hartleys of the news of the bill becoming law. “There truly are no words adequate enough to thank everyone for their kindness and gratitude in helping make this happen.”

Under the bill, a cannabidiol treatment preparation is defined as an oil containing cannabidiol and tetrahydrocannabinol, with a THC concentration of no more than 5 percent relative to the CBD level. The concentration must be verified through testing by a third-party, independent laboratory.

The bill covers debilitating medical conditions defined chronic disease or medical conditions causing a serious impairment of strength or ability to function, including one that results in seizures. The patient is required to be under current and active treatment by a physician licensed to practice medicine and surgery in Kansas, and that physician must provide a diagnosis letter. The physician’s letter and third-party lab testing results must be carried with the CBD oil at all times.

As well as providing an affirmative defense, Claire and Lola’s Law also  prohibits state agencies and political subdivisions from commencing child removal proceedings based on the possession or use of cannabidiol treatment by a parent.

The bill will take effect on July 1st, 2019

“This is the first step in addressing the health needs of many Kansans, but we still have a long way to go,” said Governor Laura Kelly. “I’m hopeful the legislature will review this issue comprehensively next session.”

Last month Governor Kelly also signed an industrial hemp bill into law, which allows for hemp derived cannabidiol oil to be used in some products.

Israel already has a robust and widespread medical cannabis program for its citizens, although bureaucracy and red tape have been overly oppressive. But that’s hopefully about to change.

Patients in Israel who have cancer, IBS and other bowel issues, and Parkinson’s are entitled to apply for a medical cannabis permit directly from the Ministry of Health. It can take more than a year for a new patient to be approved, mainly because until now, the process had many steps and needed special approval that only a handful of doctors were able to provide. That’s mostly because cannabis has been classed as a dangerous drug officially and has been subject to criminal proceedings, fines and even jail time.

Deputy Health Minister Yaakov Litzman has always been opposed to legalizing cannabis in Israel. He does, however, understand that it helps a lot of people who could otherwise be taking opioids and other dangerous medications from doctors, instead of an all-natural, herbal solution. Litzman told reporters last Thursday that he intends to expand the medical cannabis program and to cut out some of the red tape.

The change will mean that instead of needing to meet with a specialist doctor and attend a designated center to collect the medication, medical cannabis and CBD will soon be available for pick up at participating pharmacies for patients with a prescription. 

The new reform will cover people suffering from a range of illnesses treatable with cannabis, who are over 18 and require no more than 40 grams a month. For their part, the Ministry of Health is currently drafting guidelines as to how the new process will work; due to be released to the public in the coming weeks.

Israel is set to allow easier access to medical cannabis in the near future

The other exciting change in official Israeli government policy is that CBD and CBD products will be released from the Drug Ordinance, and thus, according to the report, “Products that do not include THC (such as products containing CBD alone) will be excluded from the Dangerous Drugs Ordinance.” That means that the production or import of CBD, as long as there’s no THC inside, will be completely legal. 

In the words of Minister Litzman, according to the Israeli cannabis.com site, “I have decided to adopt the position of professionals in the Health Ministry to allow a prescription instead of a license for certain medical conditions for which diagnosis is clear. I emphasize that this is not legalization and that a person who is not medically allowed to use it will not be able to receive the drug at the pharmacy. But this is a process that will make it easier for bureaucratic procedures to be made available to the sick public,” he said.

At the same time, the director general of the Ministry of Health, Moshe Bar-Siman-Tov, said, “Israel is leading the use of cannabis for medical purposes. This step is another step in relieving patients and turning medical cannabis into a medical product like any other product. We will continue to monitor the application and make it easier for patients while ensuring that those who need to receive the easiest way. “

While it remains to be seen how the technical details of this bureaucratic reform will pan out, it’s excellent news for Israeli patients who want to medicate with cannabis or CBD. It could also pave the way for other countries to consider improving their medical cannabis programs too.

Whatever the case may be, there’s a strong tide of cannabis legalization in the world today, as big pharma exerts as much pressure as they can to keep natural remedies like cannabis off the shelves and to keep them packed with money-making and addictive alternatives.  

Although the use of medical cannabis is legal in Canberra, touted as Australia’s culture capital, patients are reporting they are being forced to purchase their medication on the street as it’s nearly impossible to find physicians in the city willing to prescribe the drug.

ABC News Australia reports that Canberra grandmother and chronic pain sufferer Kerrie-Ann Trembath Forster has had serious difficulties gaining access to the country’s medical cannabis program because of a lack of people prescribing related medications. Trembath Forster has said she would rather access cannabis legally through the “access scheme”, but said she has had no choice but to purchase the drug from illicit sources.

Although Trembath Forster practices yoga and meditation to help deal with the pain, which she finds helpful, it’s not always enough to manage her illness.

“None of us want to be stoned. We just want to be a part of life,” she said.

Her search for pain relief has made her wary of local medical professionals. “I just realized how many doctors are ignorant and arrogant,” she said. “They are willing to put you on all sorts of drugs, and then they have a thing about cannabis.”

While Trembath Forster said her own family doctor was open to the idea of medical cannabis, she was told she would have to travel to 286 km to Sydney to see a physician who would allow her to get on the program. For a patient frequently unable to leave her bed, the lack of local prescribers has rendered access extremely challenging.

“That’s where I’m going to be doing it… there’s nowhere in Canberra,” Trembath Forster said. Many patients with limited mobility and/or financial resources report similar experiences.

Australian law requires medical cannabis to be prescribed by an authorized prescriber, that is “medical practitioners who are approved to prescribe unapproved therapeutic goods for a particular condition or class of patients in their immediate care without further [Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA)] approval.”

To qualify as an authorized prescriber, a physician must “have the training and expertise appropriate for the condition being treated and the proposed use of the product; be able to best determine the needs of the patient” and “be able to monitor the outcome of therapy.”

Executive director of Chronic Pain Australia Benjamin Graham shared similar concerns to those of Trembath Forster. “[Patients] hit a brick wall when they see their GP,” he said.

“The GP either doesn’t know too much about it. They really aren’t comfortable about it, or they say there’s no research or evidence to support medical cannabis.”

Dr. Antonio Di Dio, president of the Australian Medical Association, said the primary barrier is “education and training for the GPs to prescribe” medical cannabis, but as more patients request it, he believes more physicians will be incentivized to participate in training.

In a stunning turn of events, the Texas Senate unanimously approved the expansion of the state’s medical marijuana program to include more qualifying conditions and make the process easier for patients. The bill had previously passed in the House and now awaits final legislative approval before heading to Gov. Greg Abbot’s desk for his signature.

Pending those final steps, the Compassionate Use Act, which previously provided low-THC cannabis oil for patients with intractable epilepsy, will now include access for those with autism, terminal cancer, all forms of epilepsy, seizure disorders, multiple sclerosis, incurable neurodegenerative diseases, and more. In addition, the bill as currently constructed would strike the provision that patients need approval from two different doctors and instead will only need one.

“This bill is about compassion,” said state senator Donna Campbell, who sponsored the bill, to The Texas Tribune. “For patients participating in the [Compassionate Use Program], they have had a remarkable and life-altering change because of this. That’s compassion.”

However, the bill represents a small step for medical marijuana advocates in Texas rather than a large one. A THC-cap of 0.5% will remain for all marijuana products provided under the Compassionate Use Act. Nor will those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) qualify under the bill. Finally, the legislation strikes a previous provision that called for a research program to better understand marijuana’s efficacy for treating these various ailments.

As the Texas Observer noted, this “wasn’t the wide-ranging medical cannabis bill that Democrats and marijuana advocates wanted.” Instead it represents a half-measure that still leaves behind many and dramatically restricts those with the most serious illnesses from receiving the proper medicine.

“This kind of policy should have been one that passed without need for much conversation because of how limited it is,” Heather Fazio, director of Texans for Responsible Marijuana Policy, told the Texas Observer. “We are still disappointed and kind of in dismay that the Legislature continues to fail the most sick Texans.”

Nearly 70 percent of Missouri voters approved medical marijuana in November.

The Show-Me State became one of 33 that has legalized medical marijuana, but the plant is still illegal in every form on the federal level.

That puts states with marijuana allowances at odds with the U.S. government and it complicates the medical treatment for some of the very people medical marijuana was supposed to benefit – military veterans.

A disabled Air Force veteran, who wants to remain anonymous because marijuana is still illegal to use in any form in Missouri, says he currently uses it for medicinal purposes. He says his chronic pain treatment got out-of-hand.

“They increased my medicine again. One doctor called it a ‘life-threatening dose,’ I was on 360 oxycodone a month,» the man said. «And then they give you all the supporting medicines that go along with that like one for sleep, one to keep you up, one for your mood. And so you end up with just a big grocery bag full of medicine every month.»

A disabled U.S. Army veteran, who also wishes to remain anonymous, says she too got upside-down in her prescription drug treatments for multiple sclerosis. She said, “I was taking a lot. I was taking the medication for the MS, which was an injection, and I had reactions (to the injection). I was taking in one day about 30 pills, and an injection. And I just I said I can’t do this anymore.»

Both veterans say they use marijuana medicinally and that it has helped alleviate their many symptoms and improved their quality of life.

A study published in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs in 2014 showed patients with post-traumatic stress disorder experienced a 75 percent decrease in their symptoms using medical marijuana. The study did say further studies are needed and there was also a danger of addiction or misuse with self-medicating patients.

Voters approved Amendment 2 with the promise of tax revenue from marijuana sales benefiting veterans’ services. But, veterans who live in any of the state’s seven veterans’ nursing centers, including the one in Mexico, will not be allowed to medicate with marijuana.

Some say it seems paradoxical that some veterans cannot take advantage of a program designed for their benefit. 

The STATES Act, Strengthening the Tenth Amendment Through Entrusting States, is a bipartisan bill that would effectively end the federal government’s prohibition of medical marijuana and leave the issue up to individual states.

As far as Missouri’s federal delegation on their support of the STATES Act, Sen. Roy Blunt’s office says he hasn’t read the bill, and Kelli Ford from Sen. Josh Hawley’s office sent ABC 17 News this statement:

“Senator Hawley respects the will of the voters and is supportive of medical marijuana so long as there are sufficient protections to limit its use to medicinal purposes. Senator Hawley does not support the recreational use of marijuana.”

Republican representatives Vicky Hartzler and Blaine Luetkemeyer didn’t respond to a request for a comment on their positions.

The Missouri Veterans Commission says it’s bound by federal restrictions and will not allow veterans to medicate with marijuana. The commission says the federal government considers marijuana a Schedule I controlled substance.

The commission said in an email to ABC 17 News, “Unless there is a change in Federal law, our Veterans homes may not permit the use of medical marijuana as it would be considered a drug offense and would prevent us from receiving the VA per diem grants.”

ABC 17 News also worked to learn if a privately-run veteran’s assistance center will allow residents to medicate with marijuana. Welcome Home in Columbia said, “Welcome Home does not have a response or position on this issue at this time.”

Both disabled vets in this report say it should be left up to the states and say the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs should allow the VA to be able to recommend and even prescribe medical marijuana.

Both veterans are also gun owners. They say they may decide not to apply for a medical marijuana certificate from the state, because they said it would interfere with their Second Amendment rights.

Regardless of its pending legality, firearms dealers will still abide by federal rules and deny gun sales to anyone with a medical cannabis card.