NATIONAL NEWS

GLOBAL

WORLD ANTI-DOPING AGENCY CONTINUES CANNABIS BAN

The World Anti-Doping Agency is likely to keep a ban on marijuana use by athletes in 2023. The agency continued the ban despite pressure to change the policy on Cannabis after U.S. sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson was barred from the Summer Olympic Games after testing positive last year.

With the continued ban on weed by the body charged with preventing drugs in international sports, athletes who test positive for marijuana in competition will face suspension from eligibility. However, last year WADA announced that it would conduct a scientific review to determine if pot should remain on the banned substances list – receiving the encouragement of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency to conduct the review, as well as broad support from athletes and politicians.

MIDWEST

WICHITA DECRIMS POT; COUNTY COMPLAINS; MAYOR GETS SPICY

First, city council members in Wichita, Kansas (at the urging of the mayor) decided to stop enforcing the pot laws. Then, Sedgwick County commissioners threatened to bill the city when the county enforces the pot laws. As marijuana remains illegal in Kansas, that prompted Wichita Mayor Brandon Whipple to vigorously clap back at the the county.

The marijuana decriminalization ordinance was the mayor’s idea. Whipple called the discussion by Sedgwick County commissioners on a city ordinance “The mayor added he doesn’t change for marijuana possession a “political show.” The mayor added see the county he doesn’t see the county having having any any legal basis for billing the city legal basis for billing the city on the costs of prosecuting pot on the costs possession cases. of prosecuting County Commission Chairman pot possession cases.” David Dennis called on staff to look at the possibility of billing Wichita for expenses resulting from handling the cases in district court. “At what point do we start charging the City of Wichita for this process?” Dennis asked. “Because we’re going to bill them for all the people that go into our jail,” he threatened.

But as Mayor Whipple said, “It just feels like a bad civics class on YouTube. There’s no legal way to send us an invoice for the stuff that the county chooses to spend their money on. That’s not how this works.”

CALIFORNIA LAW PROTECTS CANNABIS USE OFF-THE-CLOCK

California will likely soon become the seventh state to protect workers from losing their jobs if they smoke marijuana when they are off the clock.

State lawmakers in August passed a bill to stop companies from punishing workers who fail certain types of drug tests. The analyses in question do not determine whether a person is high. Instead, they identify metabolites indicative of whether the person has used marijuana in recent days or weeks.

These tests use urine or hair samples to detect a substance the body makes when it breaks down THC. But the THC metabolites can stay in a person’s body for weeks after using marijuana, according to the Mayo Clinic. That shortcoming means that people who fail a marijuana test are often not impaired at all.

Assembly Bill 2188 protects workers from punishment for failing the aforementioned drug analyses – however, companies could still reprimand employees for failing other types. These include tests using saliva, which are reputedly better at determining if a person is currently high.

43% OF YOUNG ADULTS USE CANNABIS

Marijuana use among young adults reached an all-time high last year. In 2021, nearly 43 percent of individuals between the ages 19 and 30 said they had used Cannabis in the past 12 months.

The research was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and conducted by the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research. The Monitoring the Future report found a steady increase in marijuana usage in the age group over the past decade. The numbers rose from 29 percent in 2011 to 34 percent in 2016.

Monitoring the Future research has tracked substance use in the United States for more than three decades.

THE SOUTH

ALABAMA ARRESTING PREGNANT WOMEN FOR WEED

AT a traffic stop in Alabama, a cop found a small amount of marijuana. Ashley Banks, a 23-year-old woman, admitted to officers that she had smoked weed two days earlier. It was the very same day that Banks learned she was pregnant. She was six weeks along.

It was this disclosure – the fact that she was pregnant – that led Etowah County officials to keep her in jail. But this was done so without a trial, and she was locked up for the next three months – charged with ”chemical endangerment” of her fetus.

Banks fell victim to a weird Alabama law that advocates say Etowah County enforces with disturbing enthusiasm. Pregnant women arrested for drug offenses aren’t even allowed to post bail and go free (the way everyone else is). They have to stay in state custody: either in jail, or in a residential drug rehab program.

The “logic” is that the women are supposedly a danger to their fetuses. Therefore, they supposedly need to be imprisoned by the state for the duration, in order to “protect their pregnancies.”

sports

TENNIS STAR UPSET ABOUT POT AT US OPEN

Nick Kyrgios was in the second set of his second-round match “...he turned to the chair umpire and started against Benjamin Bonzi at the U.S. Open in late August complaining about a whiff of marijuana being – when out of the blue, he in the air at turned to the chair umpire and started complaining Louis Armstrong Stadium.” about a whiff of marijuana being in the air at Louis Armstrong Stadium.

Up a set and at 4-3 on serve in the second, Kyrgios asked the umpire to issue a warning to the crowd after claiming he saw and smelled someone smoking weed.

On the way to his bench during a changeover, the volatile 27-year-old petulantly sniped, “You don’t even want to remind anyone not to do it?”

1.5

ounces of weed will be legal to possess if Maryland’s Question 4 is approved by voters.

165

pounds of illegal Cannabis was discovered in a Salt Lake City warehouse in September.

10k

pounds of untaxed marijuana was seized in a Wolf Creek, Ore. bust last month.

73%

of Republicans believe legal Cannabis businesses should have the same rights as other legal businesses.

$18m

in medical marijuana sales for July made up Colorado’s lowest total since January 2014.

$10b

market loss, on average, is experienced by pharmaceutical companies after a state legalizes weed.