Cannabis and psychedelic drug use among young American adults has reached an all-time high, according to a federal survey. The data was collected by the National Institute of Health (NIH) and shows a strong comeback after a year of low use of all substances by young adults in 2020 due to the pandemic.

The survey was conducted among people aged 19-60 from April to October 2021 and found that 43% of young adults (aged 19-30) said they had used cannabis 20 or more times in the past the previous month, an increase of 34% compared to the results of previous surveys. These increases were also present in people aged 54 to 50, but to a lesser extent.

The researchers who conducted the survey are surprised by these results, which show that young adults are not only more interested in cannabis and psychedelics than previous generations, but also in vaping nicotine and alcohol.

According to the NIH, reports of binge drinking by young adults (defined as having had five or more drinks in a row in the past two weeks) have returned to pre-pandemic levels in 2021 after dropping significantly in 2020.

“High-intensity drinking, defined as having had 10 or more drinks in a row in the past two weeks, was at its highest level since it was first measured. in 2005, reported by 13% of young adults in 2021, compared to 11% in 2005. However, alcohol consumption in recent months and years, as well as daily alcohol consumption, are decreasing among young adults for 10 years. »

Many factors contribute to this result according to the study. In addition to a more lax attitude towards cannabis and, to some extent, psychedelics, these figures also reflect the mental health of young adults in the United States, which has probably collapsed as a result of the pandemic.

Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the NIH, called the results “very concerning”.

“What they tell us is that the problem of drug use among young people has worsened in this country and that the pandemic, with all its mental stressors and upheavals, has probably contributed to this. increase,” she said.

In a separate poll conducted by Gallup last week, more Americans (16%) said they had smoked cannabis than tobacco (11%) in the past week.

The personal experience of cannabis is also strongly linked to the opinion that Americans have of it:

• A large majority of adults who say they have tried cannabis – almost half of Americans – think its effects on users (70%) and society in general (66%) are positive
• Conversely, the majority of those who have never tried cannabis believe that its effects are negative: 72% say so about its effects on society and 62% about its effects on consumers.

Charlotte Caldwell, whose epileptic son Billy helped change medical cannabis law in the UK, has won free access to medical cannabis products for children with severe epilepsy, which could save money up to £6,000 in private prescription costs, equivalent to eight months’ treatment.

As many as 75 families will be eligible for support when they apply for funding for their treatment from the NHS, Britain’s healthcare system, through the Refractory Epilepsy Specialty Clinical Advisory Service (RESCAS), a procedure that can take up to eight months.

The support from Althea, Canopy Growth and Cellen, which all make cannabis products prescribed for children with epilepsy in the UK, comes just a month after Charlotte launched a new campaign to mark the fourth anniversary of the confiscation of his son Billy’s medical cannabis by customs officials at Heathrow Airport, an event that led politicians to change the law to allow doctors to prescribe it.

Charlotte called on medical cannabis manufacturers to provide free medication and to give other children with epilepsy the support Billy received by providing free access to life-saving drugs through the RESCAS procedure.

The latter was set up in 2020 following a lawsuit filed by Charlotte against the British government. It provides a pathway to NHS-funded medical cannabis (and other ‘alternative treatment’ options) for refractory epilepsy patients under the age of 18.

During the campaign, Charlotte sought to reach out to all medical cannabis manufacturers to ask for patient support during RESCAS requests. Besides Althea, Canopy Growth and Cellen, Charlotte continues to have conversations with several other manufacturers and is confident that other companies will agree to contribute in due course.

Medicines produced by these three manufacturers are currently prescribed to around 30 patients in the UK via private prescription. It is estimated that around 45 other patients are being prescribed medical cannabis from five other manufacturers, all invited by Charlotte to donate their treatments.

“We cannot guarantee that these children will be successful in the Rescas process, but they will receive between six and eight months of medicine, which will relieve their financial burden for a while in these difficult times. And then, if their application is accepted, they will be able to benefit from long-term funding from the NHS”.

Billy, now 17, used to have up to 100 seizures a day, but now goes several months without having one.

Ms Caldwell said: “If your child currently has access to medical cannabis for epilepsy via private prescription, please do not hesitate to contact me. Although I cannot guarantee all results, I promise that as a mother who has been in the same circumstances as you, I and the trustees of the I Am Billy Foundation will do everything possible to support your child. in the Rescas process, completely free of charge.

“Billy and I continue to lobby other manufacturers of medical cannabis and I believe this is just the start of wider patient access to medical cannabis through the NHS. »

The small South American country of Guyana has passed an industrial hemp law that decriminalizes hemp cultivation and paves the way for a licensed industry.

The Industrial Hemp Act was introduced in the National Assembly of Guyana’s Parliament in May and passed on August 8.

The new law will allow Guyana to establish an industrial hemp regulatory body, the Guyana Industrial Hemp Regulatory Authoritywith a board of directors.

The regulator will be able to issue licenses to individuals or businesses to grow hemp and manufacture hemp-based products, “including food, textiles, furniture, medicine and cosmetics,” according to the law. .

Research licenses will also be permitted.

Industrial hemp is defined as Cannabis and its derivatives having a THC concentration of less than 0.3% by dry weight.

Agriculture Minister Mustapha Zulfikar said he expected hemp production to be an economic asset and “a valuable source of foreign currency”.

Guyanese President Mohamed Irfaan Ali sees this as an opportunity to convert cannabis growers to hemp and strengthen the country’s agricultural sector which has seen the decline of key crops like rice and sugar cane – a staple crop of Guyana. which has collapsed by more than 50% in recent years.

The government also sees a role for hemp in diversifying Guyana’s wider economy, while pursuing the country’s low-carbon development strategy.

The legislation is available here.

The American company Redwire Corporation is preparing to grow hemp on the International Space Station.

The Redwire greenhouse could be launched in the spring of next year. According to the company, it is the only commercial plant cultivation platform capable of growing from seed to maturity in space.

During this mission, Redwire customer Dewey Scientific will grow industrial hemp in the greenhouse for a 60-day experiment for a gene expression study. Dewey Scientific is a cannabis-focused company that seeks to increase crop efficiency and yield while reducing inputs.

“We work at the intersection of classical breeding and molecular biology,” the company states.

The hemp experiment is just the first step according to Redwire.

“Redwire Greenhouse will expand opportunities for scientific discovery to improve plant production on Earth and enable essential research for plant production in space to benefit future long-duration human spaceflight,” said Dave Reed of Redwire.

“In addition to improving crops on our own planet, this is something that will also be essential in space, as humanity heads for the stars – not just for food, but also for the recovery of oxygen and water. »

“Increasing the throughput of plant production research in space, through commercially developed capabilities, will be important in providing critical information to NASA’s Artemis missions and beyond,” said Reed.

Under the Artemis program, NASA is working with commercial and international partners to establish a long-term sustainable presence on the Moon in preparation for missions to Mars.

This is not Redwire’s first contact with the ISS. Its Passive Orbital Nutrient Delivery System (PONDS) devices, developed in partnership with Tupperware Brands, are already working on the space station. PONDS was developed for NASA’s vegetable production system, named Veggie.

It won’t be the first time hemp has been taken into space either. Officially, this happened in 2019 when hemp seeds grown in Kentucky were taken to the ISS to assess seed stability after prolonged exposure to microgravity conditions.

Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves has announced plans to legalize cannabis. During the official act commemorating the first 100 days of his administration, the president created the event by unveiling this initiative.

According to Rodrigo Chaves, the project will be sent to Congress for discussion. Likewise, he also claimed that his administration would soon release the medical cannabis regulations, which the previous Congress approved.

“We have prepared the regulation of industrial hemp and cannabis for medical use, and we will promote the bill for the legalization of cannabis for recreational use,” the president said in his speech.

Nevertheless, the president did not give specific details on how cannabis would be regulated.

The proposal takes no one by surprise. During his campaign, Rodrigo Chaves declared that he was for the legalization of cannabis and that he would initiate the necessary reforms. Chaves had also said there was scientific evidence to support the decision. In addition, he explained the case of several countries that have legalized it and achieved good results.

In 2021, former Congressman Enrique Sanchez also introduced a bill that sought to decriminalize the recreational use of cannabis. Lawmakers did not support it at the time. The country had also already announced in 2020 its intention to return to growth via hemp.

Getting this project approved will not be an easy task. The proposal still gets a lot of backlash from some sectors, and some political parties have opposed the legalization of cannabis in the past.

Fabricio Alvarado, leader of the New Republic (PNR) party, said he would oppose the proposal. However, some parties are ready to decriminalize cannabis use and hope there will be an open and transparent dialogue.

“We should analyze this proposal from different angles. The plan can be viable as long as the opinions of the various ministries are taken into account. I think it has been applied in developed countries, giving good results. It is important to speak openly,” noted Johana Obando, MP for the Progressive Liberal Party.

Regular Newsweed consumers will have noticed that we have been on hiatus for the past 2 weeks. But since the news does not await us, here is a recap of what has happened in the meantime on the planet Cannabis.

France

31 senators from the Socialist, Ecologist and Republican (SER) group have signed a platform calling for the legalization of cannabis. In retaliation, the Republican group sent its finest knives on TV to try to explain that it was a bad idea.

Othman Nasrou, vice-president of the Ile-de-France region anyway, explained that it should not be legalized because “60% of cannabis still comes from the black market” in Canada, an argument that usually serves to show that legalization works well. If you read Othman, it’s more like 60% legal cannabis.

Then Patrick Karam, also vice-president of the Ile-de-France regional council, went to Cnews to justify his refusal of legalization that would lift “the moral taboo linked to the legal”. The same moral taboo that makes France the biggest consumer of cannabis in Europe? Bitch please.

Europe

German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach has admitted he has tried cannabis and is now in favor of legalization after being opposed to it. In an interview, he gave some hints about the legalization of cannabis in Germany: More than 5 billion euros per year in potential tax revenue, an “ambitious” approach in line with European legislation, cannabis will probably be available in stores specialized and also in pharmacies. Drafting of the law is expected to be completed for presentation to the Bundestag before the end of this year, before it comes into force in early 2023 and sales begin in 2024 at the earliest.

Britons are now a majority in support of a harm reduction approach, like that of Portugal, which treats addiction as a mental illness rather than a crime, in a recent YouGov poll.

The Danes also want to legalize and let the state take care of cannabis sales.

UNITED STATES

An American anti-drug organization, the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America (CADCA), called on its supporters to oppose a federal bill on the legalization of cannabis, the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act (CAOA). The most surprising remains the sponsors of this non-profit organization: Purdue Pharma, Pfizer, Barclays, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, Deloitte, Krispy Kreme, Johnson and Johnson or the NFL which is currently carrying out its own studies on the use of cannabis to pain management in athletes. Some of these companies are actively profiting from the cannabis industry in Canada, while donating to an organization that encourages US senators to vote against legalization. CADCA has since removed the “sponsors” page.

Here’s a visual version pic.twitter.com/pnrU9ffUDI

— Hazey Taughtme™️ (@Hazeytaughtme) August 4, 2022

A bill, the Medical Marijuana and Cannabidiol Research Expansion Act, was adopted by the House of Representatives and aims to develop research on the medical use of cannabis. It would facilitate the approval of various health or research establishments to “manufacture, distribute, dispense or possess cannabis or cannabidiol (CBD) for the purpose of medical research”.

Universities in states that have legalized cannabis have seen an increase in applications for admission “with no apparent decline in the quality of student applicants.”

Cannabis regulation in New York is taking too long. The sale of cannabis is nevertheless already very open, with trucks selling weed in the middle of the street. The police have just seized 20 of them.

Brittney Griner, the professional basketball player who plays in Russia and whose suitcase contained a cartridge to vape cannabis, was sentenced to 9 years in prison. Some recall the hypocrisy of the American government which, while finding Brittney Griner’s sentence ridiculous, continues to imprison its citizens, and in particular black people, for cannabis.

North Dakota will vote for (or against) the legalization of cannabis next November after a popular initiative has collected a sufficient number of signatures.

Canada

The SQDC, which markets cannabis and its derivative products in Quebec, has put on sale 3 new edibles : beets, cauliflower and dried figs infused with THC/CBD. Each bite contains 2.5mg of THC and 5mg of CBD. CA$6.90 for 4.

Canadian legal cannabis producers destroyed a record 425 million grams of unpackaged dried cannabis in 2021, far exceeding the amount they were able to sell. In addition to the destruction of unpackaged dried cannabis, more than 7 million packaged cannabis products across the country were sent for destruction in 2021, according to Health Canada data.

Canopy Growth lost $2 billion selling cannabis this quarter.

The monopoly ofOntario Cannabis Store, the only one authorized to sell cannabis online and wholesale in Ontario, is starting to irritate. It must be said that the business is good: the organization sets the purchase prices from the producers, takes a 42% margin and then resells to the shops which will also have to add a margin to try to survive. This monopoly that is gobbling up profits, stifling innovation, and slowly strangling the new cannabis industry, especially its smaller operators and independent retailers. The icing on the cake, following a computer attack on one of its servers, it was forced to stop delivering cannabis to stores for ten days.

Rest of the world

Gustavo Petro, the new president of Colombia, calls for an end to the war on drugs: “It is time to adopt a new international convention which recognizes that the war on drugs has failed”. The country is now considering decriminalization of cocaine use and public control of production to dry up cartel money. Some American companies are already interested in the business of “decocainated” coca leaves, such as those used for Coke, but whose production has so far been highly regulated.

The Thai cannabis market could already be worth €1.2 billion as early as 2025. However, the decriminalization put in place is not legalization for the time being. The government recalled that the sale of cannabis was illegal on Khao San Road, one of Bangkok’s tourist avenues, even though at least 4 cannabis stores have set up shop there. However, the police can only arrest people smoking in public. Several weed stores have also just opened in Pattaya, Pukhet or Ko Pha Ngan.

Thailand, still, takes the first steps to decriminalize the personal use of drugs, by adopting threshold quantities (1.5 g of methamphetamine, 300 mg of heroin, 600 mg of cocaine). Possession of an amount below the threshold may lead to referral to a treatment program instead of prosecution. One question remains: what “treatment program”?

Malaysia wants to take inspiration from Thailand to promote the medical use of cannabis. Thailand’s health minister said he would organize a trip for his Malaysian counterpart to study how cannabis can be used for medical purposes.

Historical cannabis growers in South Africa are mechanically excluded from cannabis legalization plans.

Research

31 young people between the ages of 12 and 25 with an anxiety disorder and showing no clinical improvement despite treatment with cognitive behavioral therapy and/or antidepressants consumed CBD for 12 weeks and up to 800 milligrams daily. Anxiety decreased by an average of 42.6%.

A study conducted by Washington State University found a 37% drop in reports of illicit synthetic cannabinoid poisoning in states where cannabis is legal, compared to states with restrictive policies.

A Canadian study has shown that the legalization of cannabis is not associated with an increase in psychoses or schizophrenia.

A Spanish study, notably conducted by GH Medical, noted that consuming 65 mg of THC was less intoxicating when combined with CBD in a 2:1 ratio than when taken alone.

Dominica’s Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit announced during his presentation of the 2022/2023 national budget that the island’s parliament could soon ask to authorize the sale of cannabis-derived products, without giving an exhaustive list of the products concerned, as well as legalize locally the sale and purchase of cannabis for the production of these items.

“During this fiscal year, as work continues on the new legislative framework, we will introduce legislation in the House to allow agro-processors engaged in the manufacture of cannabis by-products to purchase cannabis locally. said the country’s leader. “Agro-processors will need to be licensed by the Commissioner of Police and other regulatory bodies. In addition, we will decriminalize the sale of cannabis by-products such as locally produced balms, oils and creams. »

According to Roosevelt Skerrit, plans are also in place for the development of the medical cannabis industry in Dominica.

“A technical committee comprising a wide range of stakeholders has been appointed by the Cabinet and is studying the important elements necessary for the success of the medical cannabis industry,” said Roosevelt Skerrit, who is also Minister of Finance and Investment. .

Dominica, a small island located between Guadeloupe and Martinique, decriminalized cannabis in November 2020. Dominicans can possess up to 28 grams of cannabis for adults aged 18 and over and are allowed to grow up to 3 plants at home.

The island is following the lead given by the Caribbean who are, country after country, reforming their cannabis laws, with pressure to decriminalize or legalize, for example, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, Antigua and Barbuda and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.