Marijuana News
The Science Behind Why Cannabis Affects Consumers Differently
Cannabis prohibition began in 1937 and has led to almost 100 years of missed research and funding. Now in 2015, as american culture begins to accept marijuana into the mainstream and legitimize it, some of the brightest minds have come together to ask important questions. What’s going on inside this plant? How does marijuana really affect our bodies and our brains? How can one plant have so many different effects and uses?
Consider what it means to answer these questions and teach the many different consumer profiles, ranging from young professionals to retired grandparents, about the varying effects of cannabis. People must be educated in order to avoid negative experiences and/or being taken advantage of. Informed consumers will be able to enhance their cannabis experience and tailor it to their medicinal or recreational needs.
Marijuana’s effects on the brain are much more complex and varied than previously thought. In fact, new studies are showing that consuming cannabis is a unique experience for each individual. So when you hear stories about people who become paranoid or anxious after consuming a small amount of cannabis, it isn’t always their fault.
3 Reasons Why Cannabis Affects Everyone Differently
1. Genes
Scientific studies show that genetic makeup impacts how cannabis affects consumers in different ways. Researchers analyzed the two genes that affect personal traits and psychiatric disorders the most: COMT val158met and 5-HTTLPR.
Cannabis influences a range of behaviors including: attention, performance, depression, and decision making. What is interesting, is that depending on your genes consuming cannabis could work to your advantage or disadvantage. Some cannabis consumers can experience a significant increase in focus and attention, while others will find it extremely hard to focus after consumption. Some may experience relief from depression, while others may aggravate their symptoms with the use of cannabis.
This doesn’t mean that marijuana shouldn’t be used to treat depression or PTSD , but it confirms that each individual who consumes, or is thinking about consuming cannabis, should learn more about how the plant will uniquely work to their benefit or disadvantage.
2. Indica vs. Sativa
We still know very little about how different strains of the same plant have different, and often inconsistent, effects. Most cannabis consumers at least know about the two different species of cannabis plants (indica vs. sativa) and the different feelings they induce. Indica is associated with a body-buzz, drowsiness and relaxation. Sativa is known for it’s cerebral, energetic, and euphoric effects.
It isn’t as simple as Indica vs. Sativa though. Marijuana classification gets complex because both strains can sometimes mimic one another’s effects; leading scientists, doctors and growers to learn more about how cannabinoids and terpenoids interact with one another in cannabis strains when consumed by humans.
3. Cannabinoids and Terpenoids
Most cannabis consumers have heard of cannabinoids. There are over 85 known cannabinoids that make up the cannabis plant. The most well-known being THC, the cannabinoid that gives you the high or euphoric feeling.
CBD (or cannabidiol) is starting to get on people’s radar as well. CBD is non-psychoactive and scientific research is finding a variety of powerful medicinal benefits associated with it as well. CBD is changing the medicinal marijuana debate because it does not cause you to feel high, but provides many healing properties. Several studies suggest that CBD can even reduce negative effects of THC, including anxiety and fatigue.
What this really means, is that we are still at the infancy stages of fully understanding cannabis. As all 50 states look towards legalization, regulation and taxation, we can look forward to funded studies that will help us better understand all of the uses, benefits, efficacy, and safety of marijuana consumption.
Marijuana News – 7 Fears About Marijuana Exposed
After a trip to Colorado, the reporters who write for USA Today came to these conclusions:
1. Staggering stoners on city streets. Almost certainly they’re around, somewhere, but on four days earlier this month in Denver, they stayed inside.
2. People smoking marijuana in public. It’s illegal, just like smoking tobacco in public.
3. That certain skunky smell. Unless you’re inside a marijuana store, Colorado smelled like mountain air — and car exhaust — but mainly mountain air. Inside a store, though, was chaos on the olfactory nerves. At Medicine Man, a retail store and medical marijuana dispensary here, massive air cleaners prevent the aroma of flowering marijuana from escaping outside.
4. Impaired drivers, except for the people who held cellphones to their ears. A 70-mile trip to Colorado Springs on Interstate 25 revealed a surprising number of drivers who obeyed the speed limit, which was 75 mph.
Read the full article.
Cannabis Trends and Big Data’s Role
Interesting take on Big Data in the cannabis industry.
Basic Cannabis Industry Trends
The cannabis industry has been growing at exponential rates. By the end of 2015, it is expected that the industry, nationally, will account for more than $3 billion. In Colorado alone, combined medicinal and recreational cannabis sales will total approximately $1 billion. These trends will only continue as additional states pass laws legalizing medicinal and recreational/adult-use cannabis.
Inside Fastest Growing Industry – Cannabis Business Start-Ups and Investments
Legal Marijuana Is The Fastest-Growing Industry In The U.S
Researchers from The ArcView Group, a cannabis industry investment and research firm based in Oakland, California, found that the U.S. market for legal cannabis grew 74 percent in 2014 to $2.7 billion, up from $1.5 billion in 2013.
Over the next five years, the marijuana industry is expected to continue to grow, with ArcView predicting that 14 more states will legalize recreational marijuana and two more states will legalize medical marijuana.
At least 10 states are already considering legalizing recreational marijuana in just the next two years through ballot measures or state legislatures.
The report projects that, by 2019, all of the state-legal marijuana markets combined will make for a potential overall market worth almost $11 billion annually.
Inside America’s Billion-Dollar Weed Business: The Grass is Greener
Pot Is Now a Full-Fledged Service Industry
You see, once the marijuana industry began to boom in 2014 due to legalization in some states, there came about, like any traditional goods-based industry, a fresh crop of for-profit service and infrastructure businesses to support it.
Since then, a successful cannabis ecosystem of financial and other services has been growing like a weed.
Cannabis Industry Business Start-Ups:
CanopyBoulder – a cannabis business accelerator, which is a mentorship-driven, seed-stage investment program for startups in the industry.
Mantis – has a specialty Marijuana Marketing Platform and claims to be the largest cannabis-friendly ad network, reaching more than seven million monthly readers across over 135 publishing partners in the niche.
Eaze – the Uber of pot, a marijuana delivery service that promises to help patients receive medical marijuana easily, quickly, and professionally.
Perhaps the best thing that happened to the industry from an investment standpoint is when PayPal’s Co-Founder Peter Thiel (via his investment firm Founders Fund) made a multi-million-dollar investment in the private equity firm, Privateer Holdings, which has raised $82 million for its cannabis business.
What Does Marijuana Legalization Look Like In Oregon?
Oregon’s Growing Marijuana Industry
“Oregon is going to lead the nation in cannabis.”
Oregon Marijuana Stats
Retailers sold more than $11 million of marijuana during Oregon’s first week of legal recreational sales, outpacing the early business done in other states that have legalized pot, according to the Oregon Retailers of Cannabis Association.
Dispensary Business Not Booming?
Two months after Oregon legalization, pot saturation sends profits up in smoke. After the state’s legalization of recreational cannabis, over-saturation and shaky business plans mean that for some dispensaries business is not booming…
How Oregon’s Rollout of Legal Marijuana is Different
The sale of legal recreational marijuana began in Oregon Thursday, and there are several new wrinkles in how the state is regulating the industry.
Oregon is the third state to allow the sale of recreational marijuana, following Colorado and Washington, and its rollout is unique. Even though state officials are still working out the full battery of regulations – which are not expected before the end of 2016 – consumers can start buying marijuana now.
How Statewide Marijuana Legalization In Oregon Is Not Statewide
Fifty-six percent of voters statewide in 2014 decided to pass marijuana legalization in Oregon. That’s the greatest statewide support for legalization of the four states that have passed it…
Colorado Marijuana Industry Stats and Business Booming with Big Data 4-20 Numbers
Big Data in the Marijuana Industry
Now that dispensaries are legal and customers feel free to enjoy the substance, business is good – making it difficult to keep track of so many customers. Big Data is helping dispensaries track their customer’s habits and customize their supply to the growing demand. Big Data also helps businesses predict when they will experience their most sales, allowing them to prepare and advertise accordingly.
Colorado Marijuana Industry
Colorado’s marijuana tax revenues nearly double last year’s figures. State brought in nearly $73.5m in the first seven months of 2015. Colorado on pace to take in $125m, compared to just $44m last year…
Business Is Booming in Colorado Marijuana Industry
7 Stunning Figures That Sum Up Colorado’s Marijuana Market
In 2014, recreational and medical marijuana brought in almost $700 million in total sales for the state of Colorado. The data is in following Colorado’s first year of recreational and medical marijuana sales, and the figures are staggering. Find out what this data could mean in the bigger picture…
Legal Pot in Colorado – 4-20 Numbers
Most Coloradans probably know that 4-20 – April 20th – has become the day for celebrating marijuana. Although the origin is still debated, four-twenty is probably the most popular numeric reference to pot…
Brain Research On Marijuana
A new paper published in Psychiatry Research sheds some light on this phenomenon, or why smoking weed seems to unleash a stream of loose associations. The study looked at a phenomenon called semantic priming, in which the activation of one word allows us to react more quickly to related words. For instance, the word “dog” might lead to decreased reaction times for “wolf,” “pet” and “Lassie,” but won’t alter how quickly we react to “chair”.
Interestingly, marijuana seems to induce a state of hyper-priming, in which the reach of semantic priming extends outwards to distantly related concepts. As a result, we hear “dog” and think of nouns that, in more sober circumstances, would seem to have nothing in common.
Here’s Vaughan Bell, lucid as always:
The effect [hyper-priming] has been reported, albeit inconsistently, in people with schizophrenia and some have suggested it might explain why affected people can sometimes make false or unlikely connections or have disjointed thoughts.
As cannabis has been linked to a slight increased risk for psychosis, and certainly causes smokers to have freewheeling thoughts, the researchers decided to test whether stoned participants would show the ‘hyper-priming’ effect.
Volunteers who were under the influence of cannabis showed a definite ‘hyper-priming’ tendency where distant concepts were reacted to more quickly. Interestingly, they also showed some of this tendency when straight and sober.
Obviously, you don’t want too much hyper-priming, or else everything seems connected; the web of associations becomes a source of delusions. But for many creative tasks it’s important to cultivate an expansive associative net, or what psychologists refer to as a “flat associative hierarchy”.
Read the Full Article
Marijuana Helps With Rare Diseases
The father of a six-year-old boy with Dravet Syndrome, a rare and catastrophic form of epilepsy, gave his son medical marijuana after prescribed drugs didn’t work.
Where Can You Get All The US States Marijuana Laws?
They aren’t the same. They don’t all make sense, The folks at NORML have pulled together a detailed breakdown of marijuana laws in each state and the District of Columbia, as well as the federal government as a whole.
For this post, we’ve drawn from NORML’s graphics and resources to highlight the rules in the seven states that border Colorado. As you’ll see, punishments vary widely, but maximum potential penalties for sales, in particular, are enormous in many places, even for small amounts of cannabis.
For example, Wyoming which borders Colorado (the home of legal marijuana) has laws:
Under Influence: If you are under the influence of marijuana in Wyoming, you could spend six months in jail.
Possession: Possessing less than three ounces of cannabis (a joint would qualify) can result in a one-year sentence.
Dealing: And sell any amount of marijuana and a judge could put you away for a decade.
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