Bid to Expand Medical Marijuana Business Faces Federal Hurdles

[Ruby the Liberal]

Reposting from the locked thread in LBN. Thanks for the link, wordpix!

Source: New York Times

Bid to Expand Medical Marijuana Business Faces Federal Hurdles

By DAVE PHILIPPS AUG. 23, 2014

WRAY, Colo. — Behind a tall curtain of corn that hides their real cash crop from prying eyes, the Stanley family is undertaking an audacious effort to expand their medical marijuana business to a national market.

For years, the five Stanley brothers, who sell a nonintoxicating strain of cannabis that has gained national attention as a treatment for epilepsy, have grown medical marijuana in greenhouses, under tight state and federal regulations. But this year, they are not only growing marijuana outdoors by the acre, they also plan to ship an oil extracted from their plants to other states.

The plan would seem to defy a federal prohibition on the sale of marijuana products across state lines. But the Stanleys have justified it with a simple semantic swap: They now call their crop industrial hemp, based on its low levels of THC, the psychoactive ingredient in pot. snip

In recent years, hundreds of families with epileptic children have moved to Colorado to try oil made from the Stanleys’ shrubby strain, which they call Charlotte’s Web. The national Epilepsy Foundation has called for it to be available to all patients, though formal research into its effectiveness remains scant. There is a nationwide waiting list of more than 9,000, which the brothers hope to eliminate by expanding their crop from small greenhouses into vast hemp fields.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/24/us/bid-to-expand-medical-marijuana-business-faces-federal-hurdles.html

OP remarks:

I have been trying to get CBD mm (so far to no avail), which has been proven effective for antitumor properties in certain cancers as well as childhood epilepsy. I applaud these brothers for putting their business and lives on the line. Warning to the O admin: stop protecting the drug and chemical companies via your agencies FDA, EPA and NIH. The revolving door and corporate greedmongering liars are preventing mm human trials and development and distribution of the safe mm alternative to dangerous chemo with all kinds of bad side effects including immune system suppression leading to deaths. Many cancers and neurological disorders are preventable, since they're linked to pesticides and other environmental poisons. End agrotoxins and get CBD to patients NOW!

Good on the Stanley brothers. May they prevail.

[wordpix]

1. update: strain high in CBD coming to my state soon

I'm a legal med marijuana patient in CT due to cancer and the dispensaries are set to open in mid-Sept. Growers are required to test the mm and give patients information re: concentrations of CBD, THC and other substances. Met with my nearby dispensary owner who's a pharmacist and knowledgeable about CBD's antitumor/antimetastasis properties, and she said she expects one strain will be high in CBD so I'm hopeful I can get it and continue on my good health path.

Also in CT, the approved growers cannot use pesticides or other "additives" in their products, which is great.

The crazy part is that without human trials, no one knows what the dosage should be. The dispensary will be asking patient volunteers to fill out forms about progress and side effects---essentially it will be a human trial, albeit unsanctioned by NIH which can't get its act together 12 yrs after patenting CBD to hold a trial.

It's a fantastic thing there's now a mm community of professionals very interested in helping patients like me. Conventional oncologists know nothing about mm and are useless in this regard. I feel that I've got partners in this experimental treatment now.

[Ruby the Liberal]

2. Great news! Congrats!