Welcome to the second edition of Leaf Brief, a roundup of the best in local, regional and national cannabis news curated by the Santa Fe Reporter. A lot of you read the first one, so we think this will become a regular thing each month. We hope you'll keep enjoying it.
This edition includes SFR's reporting on behind-the-scenes cannabis litigation and a supposed crackdown on CBD in New Mexico, plus some cannabis store highlights in Santa Fe. You'll find more interesting regional, national, and handy news below.
Health News
Depression and cannabis
Before he committed suicide, the late chef star Anthony Bourdain told Rolling Stone there was a "guy inside of" him who just wanted to lay in bed, smoke weed all day and watch cartoons. His life was a series of stratagems to avoid this depressive state, he said. The link between depression and cannabis is far from clear, and there are conflicting accounts of whether it hurts or helps. Project CBD lays out some of the evidence that all seems to vaguely suggest that cannabis may be of help.
Senate protects medical cannabis from Jeff Sessions
In the last Leaf Brief we said a powerful committee in the House of Representatives approved of language in a Justice Department funding bill shielding medical cannabis facilities from prosecution. This week its counterpart in the Senate did the same thing. This basically means the DOJ will be unable to enforce a memo released in January by Attorney General Jeff Sessions targeting both medical and recreational cannabis industries across the country.
New Mexico dispensaries fund UNM research
Funding for cannabis research is severely constrained by the feds. Universities, which are typically the ones who do it, have to scrounge up funds from private sources and then navigate perilous regulations. KRQE reports that several dispensaries, which it did not name, are helping fund researchers at the University of New Mexico who are looking into the plant's effects on PTSD and cancer. They've given $2,000 so far.
Regional News
New Mexico Medical Cannabis Board getting together
The board that meets twice a year and decides on recommendations for the New Mexico medical cannabis program will meet "in early summer." A previous meeting was cancelled because there are only two members, and three are needed to officially run meetings. We're not sure how to join, but if you don't suck and know your stuff, maybe try getting on that? Side note: This will be one of the last meetings until a new governor is inaugurated next year.
Number of cardholders in New Mexico tops 53,500
It's kind of a repetitive story: The number of cardholders reaches a new threshold, the media compares its growth over the last year, and probably Ultra Health sends out a press release about the whole thing, creating a feedback loop of momentum. The latest figure reported by the Department of Health is that the number of cardholders rose 25 percent since last May and included 11,000 new people. We don't see why it would stop growing any time soon. (Speaking of Ultra Health, the dispensary won the lawsuit it filed after the state sanctioned it for showing off a cannabis plant in the 2016 State Fair).
Who has your pot data?
California may soon add more protections to the data that dispensaries store about their customers' pot-buying habits. The state is the largest with a recreational market and has no laws in place to prevent the sale of customer data to brokers. Other states like Oregon and Alaska explicitly outlawed the sale of cannabis customer data last year. New Mexico doesn't have a recreational market, and if any of its 35 licensed nonprofit producers were selling customer data to advertisers, it'd be a big deal—per HIPAA violations.
Around the Web
Federal hemp legalization on the horizon
A Senate committee evaluating provisions of a federal agricultural bill approved a part of the bill that would remove hemp from the definition of cannabis, which would all but legalize hemp at the federal level. The bill would also make it easier for hemp growers to get crop insurance. The provision seems to have bipartisan support, but the actual farm bill may not be as popular.
The chorus grows
While citing a report about racist low-level marijuana arrests in Minneapolis, US Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) tweeted earlier this week that cannabis should be legalized at the federal level. Former House Speaker and village drunk John Boehner told newscasters in Cincinnati that the feds should stay out of state cannabis. And Dave Chappelle has been going around stumping for a governor candidate in Maryland whose biggest plank is legalizing marijuana there. The most surreal celebrity cannabis news as of late, however, was Dennis Rodman tearily celebrating the Trump administration's summit with North Korea's Kim Jong-Un while wearing a shirt promoting the cryptocurrency potcoin (and obviously a MAGA hat, too).
Sorry for racism
How much is an apology worth? Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ) introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives this week asking Congress to apologize for the devastating and racist effects of the war on drugs. Marijuana prohibition was a central part of the drug war, which a Nixon aid admitted decades later was meant to explicitly target black people and the anti-war left. Decades of research have shown racial disparities between whites and people of color targeted by drug enforcement. Will Congress apologize for all that? Do ya’ll even care?
