Featured guests: Scott Thorn, who’s the COO for The Clinic marijuana shop chain that operates in three states; and Strainz CEO Hugh Hempel, whose company manages cannabis brands.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
LOTS TO TALK ABOUT
• “Who smokes flower anymore?” Sales for concentrates are growing fast.
• People are snapping up cannabis licenses in Nevada in hopes of a recreational-use future. When will it happen?
• The problems with expanding a marijuana business across state lines.
TOP MARIJUANA NEWS
False alarm: No THC in Colorado town’s water supply: Water in the town of Hugo is not contaminated with THC after all, state tests concluded Saturday morning. The Colorado Bureau of Investigation provided the more conclusive results indicating the water does not have THC, the psychoactive compound in marijuana. Local officials had issued a health advisory warning residents to avoid drinking or using the water after field tests showed THC in the water; those results were apparent false positives. –Report by The Denver Post’s Yesenia Robles
How PTSD became the most divisive medical pot issue of 2016: In the past three months, the dominoes appeared to be falling in favor of proponents for the use of medical marijuana to treat symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, including three states adding PTSD to their lists of qualifying conditions. A total of 17 states, Washington, D.C., and Guam now allow for medical marijuana to be used for PTSD. But not all states are falling in line — including Colorado — and concerns still loom for some in the medical and mental health communities. “The politics are far outpacing the research,” said Dr. Samuel Wilkinson, a resident physician in the Yale School of Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry. “We need more funding. We need more studies.” Those studies have been slow to progress with many federal hurdles to clear and questions raised about the quality of federally-provided marijuana. “We are spending $2 million of medical marijuana surplus money to study what most people would consider a sub-optimal study drug,” says Dr. Sue Sisley, who is leading a Colorado-funded PTSD research project that is the first to use raw marijuana in a placebo-controlled trial. –Report by The Cannabist’s Alicia Wallace
POT QUIZ
Test your current-events knowledge about Colorado child ER visits related to cannabis, a new medical state’s first store and home delivery, and which city is the stoniest.