Article by David Brown, Lift Public Safety Canada is expected to soon release the results of a recent pilot project testing the effectiveness of oral fluid drug screening devices for accurately detecting drug impairment. The pilot program, which took place from December 2016 to March 2017 tested two different roadside drug detection devices, the Alere DDS 2 and the Securetec DrugWipe 5S. These are both ...

Article by Ricardo Oliveira, Lift The prevalence of cannabis use in the general U.S. population more than doubled in the period between 2002 and 2011. In 2002, 4.5% of the adult population reported having used cannabis, whereas in 2011 this was the case for 9.5% of the population. One-third of all adults aged 18 to 34 have tried cannabis in ...

Article by Guelph Today As the Canadian government prepares to introduce new marijuana legislation, almost 130,000 Canadians have already registered to use medical marijuana to treat a variety of conditions, including pain, nausea, epilepsy and multiple sclerosis. And it’s not a new phenomenon: medical marijuana use dates back more than 4,000 years. Linda Parker’s new book, Cannabinoids and the Brain ...

Article by Matt Richel, New York Times Nine days after Nikolas Michaud’s latest heroin relapse, the skinny 27-year-old sat on a roof deck at a new drug rehabilitation clinic here. He picked up a bong, filled it with a pinch of marijuana, lit the leaves and inhaled. All this took place in plain view of the clinic’s director. “The rules ...

Article by Randy Shore, Vancouver Sun Scientists at the University of B.C. have identified about 30 genes related to the characteristic flavours of cannabis, from the nose-wrinkling funk of skunk to the distinctive earthiness of purple kush. The finding, published Wednesday in the journal Plos One, is a first step toward standardizing different varieties of B.C.’s iconic intoxicant. As Canada hurtles toward a ...

Article by Reuters, NBC News In states that legalized medical marijuana, U.S. hospitals failed to see a predicted influx of pot smokers, but in an unexpected twist, they treated far fewer opioid users, a new study shows. Hospitalization rates for opioid painkiller dependence and abuse dropped on average 23 percent in states after marijuana was permitted for medicinal purposes, the ...

Article by Sirius J, High Times While researching into how cannabis interacts with other drugs in the brain, scientists inadvertently discovered why coffee and getting high go so well together. Caffeine reinforces the effects with THC, potentially making it more pleasurable. To get a better grasp of how a substance affects the human brain, scientists sometimes look at the interaction ...

Article by Christopher Ingraham, Washington Post Insys Therapeutics, a pharmaceutical company that was one of the chief financial backers of the opposition to marijuana legalization in Arizona last year, received preliminary approval from the Drug Enforcement Administration this week for Syndros, a synthetic marijuana drug. Insys gave $500,000 last summer to Arizonans for Responsible Drug Policy, the group opposing marijuana legalization in ...

Article by William Stash Jones, Oregon Cannabis Connection A new pharmaceutical drug produced by the company Insys has received approval for placement in Schedule II classification by the DEA after a two year long process to get the approval. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) made the recommendation and made the following findings from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA): FDA-approved ...

Article by Chris Roberts, High Times Fifty billion here, $10 billion there—estimates of the size and the growth of demand for cannabis, cannabis research and other marijuana-related ancillary products and services differ only in guessing at just how huge weed is going to be, everywhere, for everybody. (Amazing; this is just what investors want to hear!) Now comes sweet music ...