Summarization By: Dr. Trish Hurford MD, MS (MoCann Healthcare Education Committee Chair) 

Washington state health data collected since the inception of recreational cannabis use in 2014, demonstrated that cannabis users may be less likely to be obese than non-users.  When compared to other states without cannabis legalization, the rates of obesity in this state did not increase in ways seen in other states where no cannabis legislation exists.   

The authors of the published research in the journal of Health Economics concluded that marijuana legalization resulted in an obesity rate that was 5.4% lower than expected when compared to states without recreational cannabis laws.  One potential mechanism includes reversing the effects of a “westernized diet” on an overactive endocannabinoid system that resulted in an imbalance of omega fatty acids.   The importance of this balance can mean the difference in weight gain for those who need it (chemotherapy and AIDS patients) and weight loss mitigating the heart, diabetes and stroke effects of obesity on the US population.  

So, it may be that the  “cannabis munchies” do not cause weight gain, but in fact balance our endocannabinoid system creating a healthier population.   This certainly helps support the need for additional MEDICAL research into this unique plant.

Sources:

• Health Economics. (2022). “Cloudy with a chance of munchies: Assessing the impact of recreational marijuana legalization on obesity.” https://doi.org/10.1002/hec.4598
• Theoretical Explanation for Reduced Body Mass Index and Obesity Rates in Cannabis Users Thomas M. Clark,* Jessica M. Jones, Alexis G. Hall, Sara A. Tabner, and Rebecca L. Kmiec Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research.Dec 2018.259-271.http://doi.org/10.1089/can.2018.0045

Initiative on Adult-use Marijuana Legalization Qualifies for November Ballot

Initiative on Adult-use Marijuana Legalization Qualifies for November Ballot

Secretary of State Certifies Legal Missouri 2022 Citizens’ Initiative Petition

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. Missouri voters will soon have an opportunity to determine whether the Show-Me State becomes the 20^th in the nation to regulate, tax and legalize marijuana for adult use.

The Legal Missouri 2022 campaign on Tuesday announced that its citizens’ initiative petition — signed by more than 400,000 supporters — contained the necessary number of valid voter signatures to qualify for the Nov. 8 general election ballot, as determined by the Missouri Secretary of State’s Office.

State officials certified 214,535 voter signatures across the state's eight congressional districts as valid, exceeding the required minimum of 184,720 needed to make the fall ballot.

“Our statewide coalition of activists, business owners, medical marijuana patients and criminal justice reform advocates has worked tirelessly to reach this point, and deserves all the credit,” said John Payne, LegalMo22 campaign manager. "Our campaign volunteers collected 100,000 signatures, on top of paid signature collection. That outpouring of grassroots support among Missourians who want to legalize, tax and regulate cannabis made all the difference." 

“We look forward to engaging with voters across the state in the coming weeks and months. Missourians are more than ready to end the senseless and costly prohibition of marijuana.”

The proposed constitutional amendment will be listed on the ballot as Amendment 3 and would allow Missourians ages 21 and older to possess, consume, purchase and cultivate marijuana.

Additionally, the tens of thousands of Missourians previously charged with nonviolent marijuana offenses would have their records automatically expunged ─ a critical criminal justice reform that if passed, would make Missouri the first state where voters took such a step.

Current Missouri law and most similar programs in other states require those seeking to vacate their convictions to first petition the courts, an expensive and time-consuming process.

A 6 percent state sales tax on marijuana would generate estimated annual revenue of at least $40.8 million, with an optional local sales tax of up to 3 percent yielding additional local government revenues of at least $13.8 million, a state auditor’s analysis projects.

The actual public benefit could potentially be much higher: sales on Missouri’s medical marijuana market now average $30 million a month – $1 million per day, or an annual pace of $360 million.

Those public dollars, in turn, would cover implementation costs including expungement, with remaining funds allocated to veterans’ services, drug addiction treatment and the state’s chronically underfunded public defender system.

The automatic expungement provision does not apply to violent offenders or those whose offenses involved distribution to a minor or operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of marijuana.

Organizations endorsing LegalMo22 to date include the ACLU of Missouri, the Missouri Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Empower Missouri, the St. Louis City, St. Louis County and St. Charles County chapters of the NAACP, the Reale Justice Network and the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) and its six chapters across the state.

In 2018, marijuana possession accounted for more than 50 percent of all drug arrests in Missouri. Of the nearly 21,000 marijuana arrests here that year, the vast majority were for simple possession of very small amounts.

The disproportionate impact of those arrests are documented in a 2020 ACLU report which showed that Blacks are 2.6 times more likely than whites to be arrested for marijuana possession in Missouri – even though their national marijuana usage rates are comparable.

In some Missouri counties, the disparity is as much as 10-to-1.

The initiative’s automatic expungement provision will provide a clean slate to those whose past convictions become what the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law calls “the punishment that never ends.”

“Despite having fully paid their debt to society, they find that the impact of their record lingers, blocking educational, employment, and housing opportunities,” the UMKC Law report concludes. The persistence of criminal records also takes a heavy toll on an individual’s health.”

Law school researchers found that only 125 Missourians (among the estimated 1.3 million to 1.8 million with criminal records) were able to expunge their records in 2019. 

The adult-use campaign comes nearly four years after Missouri voters overwhelmingly agreed to enshrine the use and sale of medical cannabis in the state Constitution.

The state Department of Health and Senior Services has since issued more than 190,000 medical cannabis cards to Missouri patients and caregivers

The Legal Missouri 2022 initiative also seeks to broaden participation in the legal cannabis industry by small business owners and among historically disadvantaged populations, including those with limited capital, residents of high-poverty communities, service-disabled veterans and those previously convicted of non-violent marijuana offenses, among other categories.

A new category of cannabis licenses reserved for small businesses would, over time, add a minimum of 144 licensed facilities to the existing 393 licensed and certified cannabis businesses in the state: 18 in each of the state’s eight congressional districts, with at least six per district operating as dispensaries and the remainder designated as wholesale facilities.

This is a new licensing category that allows operators to both cultivate the plant and manufacture cannabis products. The new license holders would be selected at random, by lottery.

A copy of the Legal Missouri 2022 petition can be found here. For more information on the adult-use ballot initiative, including details on how to volunteer or donate to the campaign, visit www.legalmo22.com.

 
Petition Highlights:

• Allows Missourians 21 years and older to possess, purchase, consume and cultivate marijuana.
• Levies state taxes of 6 percent on retail sales of marijuana. New revenue funds regulatory program and costs to process automatic expungements, with the surplus split equally among veterans’ services, drug addiction treatment, and Missouri’s underfunded public defender system.
• Allows local governments to assess local sales taxes of up to 3 percent.
• Automatically expunges nonviolent marijuana-related criminal records of hundreds of thousands of Missourians. Current Missouri law and most similar programs in other states require those seeking to vacate their convictions to first petition the courts, adding time and expenses.
• Violent offenders and those whose offenses involved distribution to a minor or operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of marijuana would be ineligible for expungement.
•  Allows local communities to opt out of adult use retail marijuana sales through a vote of the people.
• Strengthen Missouri’s medical marijuana program. The petition extends the amount of time that medical marijuana patient and caregiver ID cards are valid from one to three years while keeping that cost low ($25). And the current $100 fee for Missourians who choose to grow medical marijuana at home will be reduced by half, with the expiration period also extended from one to three years.
• Provides employment discrimination protection for medical patients, preventing them from being denied employment or being disciplined or fired for off-the-job medical marijuana use.
• Seeks to broaden participation in the legal cannabis industry by small business owners and among historically disadvantaged populations, including those with limited capital, residents of high-poverty communities, service-disabled veterans and those previously convicted of non-violent marijuana offenses
• Adds a minimum of 144 of these new small businesses to the existing 378 licensed and certified cannabis businesses in the state.
• All new license holders will be selected at random, by lottery.
• Adds nurse practitioners to the category of healthcare professionals who can issue medical cannabis recommendations to patients.

John Payne - Legal Missouri 2022 Campaign Manager 

By:  Emily Tuttle – Springbig  

10DLC stands for 10-digit long code which are numbers that can support the high volume of text messages that successful A2P, or application-to-person, messaging requires. It offers delivery reliability and security for business senders by requiring campaign registrations from the companies, cutting down on campaign approval times and increasing deliverability.

Increasing regulations

All messaging traffic for major carriers like AT&T, Sprint, and T-mobile needs to be fully vetted and approved for 10DLC. Verizon launched its version of 10DLC in early 2020 but did not require a vetting process – just an increase in filtering for spam, scams, and unauthorized content related to SHAFT (Sex, Hate, Alcohol, Firearms, and Tobacco), whcih includes cannabis content.

Now the cost of non-compliance is increasing which affects the cannabis industry directly. Wireless carriers have always enforced regulations like SHAFT guidelines for text message marketing but now the regulations are getting stricter and fees are higher for those who don’t comply with these regulations. We believe this makes it even more attractive than before to keep your communications compliant with regulations!

These regulations are why after 10DLC was implemented, if your text message copy contained cannabis content you may have seen a gradual drop in Verizon deliverability as your messages might have been subject to some level of filtering. Also, in 2021 carriers such as T-Mobile announced that they would be heavily increasing fees on non-compliant messages. These include a pass-through fee of up to $10,000. As 10DLC becomes more prevalent, so do the regulations and fees concerning non-compliance. By not complying you are risking significant additional fees to your campaigns.

That being said, using mass text message marketing is still very much possible for any cannabis dispensary, and from the perspective of sustainable business growth complying with 10DLC is the right call.

Navigating 10DLC guidelines

As it seems 10DLC is here to stay, here are a few tips on how to navigate the new rules while staying compliant:

By ensuring your SMS marketing platform complies with the 10DLC regulations to avoid any unwanted fees. Using evasion techniques such as dynamic routing (gray routing) to go around 10DLC regulations can come with severe sanctions. In a heavily regulated field like the cannabis industry compliance is key, so avoid using platforms that try to evade regulations. Taking risks by not complying can hurt your business in the long run Including links in your copy that direct customers to websites can be a great way to provide customers with more information about for example upcoming events or products. However, make sure that the links landing page is also compliant with the guidelines, instead of sending links directly to cannabis websites.

To learn more or see a demo of our industry leading platform please visit us at springbig.com

Research Analysis by: Dr. Trish Hurford, MD, MS & Cindy Northcutt, RN, BSN, JD Co-Chairs,

MoCannTrade Health, Education & Training Committee  

Researchers from Oregon State University and the Oregon Health & Science University reported this month that CBDA and CBGA inhibited the reproduction and spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus. These products come from the raw cannabis plant. Could there be even more to the cannabis plant and its effects on health? The answer is, maybe. 

What we know: Our cells have an innate antiviral ability. When a virus is present in our bodies, our immune system notices and responds, limiting the virus’s entry into our cells and its replication. This innate process should lead to a controlled cell death (called apoptosis) of the infected cells, thereby stopping or slowing infections. Unfortunately, our immune systems have weakly responded to the COVID-19 coronavirus in this way, leading to high infection rates and mortality.  

What the researchers found: When CBDA and CBGA were combined with the COVID-19 viral proteins, they were better able to activate the immune system, leading to apoptosis. The researcher also found that CBDA helped “prime” the body to better respond to the virus even before exposure without harming normal cells. This suggests that CBD may have a role in SARS-CoV-2 prevention.  

Notably, the research was performed in vitro, meaning in a petri dish and not on humans (in vivo). The doses of CBDA and CBGA delivered were high but achievable for human consumption at non-toxic doses. Further work is needed to determine how the virus/CBD combination is altered when CBD is present and at what dose. 

This week, another study funded by the National Institutes of Health and the University of Chicago was published in Science Advances journal that looked at CBD’s effect on live cells, or in vivo. These researchers found that CBD and its metabolite 7-OH-CBD, could potentially block the SARS-CoV-2 virus from replicating in the lungs of infected mice, representing a possible therapeutic treatment once people are infected with the virus.  

This study also reported that a review of SARS-Co-V-2 infection rates in over 1000 patients treated with high quality CBD for epilepsy (tracked by the National COVID Cohort Collaborative) found that these patients, who were given CBD twice daily in an oral solution of 100 mg/ml, were more likely to test negative for COVID-19 compared to their counterparts who recorded no use of CBD. 

In summary:   More clinical trials, particularly in vivo, are needed. Patients should not forgo currently accepted treatments for COVID-19/ SARS-CoV-2 based on the findings above. But this data should spur more studies. Future research may provide data to support an excellent and markedly safe option to treat and prevent COVID-19 and other viral infections using the cannabis plant.  

Cannabinoids Block Cellular Entry of SARS-CoV‐2 and the Emerging Variants 

Richard B. van Breemen,* Ruth N. Muchiri, Timothy A. Bates, Jules B. Weinstein, Hans C. Leier, Scotland, Farley, and Fikadu G. Tafesse 

https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jnatprod.1c00946 

Cannabidiol inhibits SARS-CoV-2 replication through induction of the host ER stress and innate immune response 

Long Chi Nguyen, et. al. 

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abi6110 

MoCannTrade's Health Education & Training committee researches & defines best practices with stakeholders (healthcare systems, physicians, providers and patients) to ensure a safe, responsible and successful medical cannabis program implementation. The healthcare committee also works to accomplish education and training, sensible regulatory development, CME credit seminars, thought leadership, speaking engagements and patient advocacy.