Herbal Knowledge
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — An NCAA panel is calling for the removal of marijuana from the organization’s list of banned drugs, suggesting that testing should be limited to performance-enhancing substances. Read More
Source: tghop
Arizona senators voted to approve a general appropriations act 2023-2024 on May 10. Within the appropriations bill is a multitude of funding proposals from the governor’s office, which includes everything from Alzheimer’s disease research ($4.1 million), a newborn screening program ($12 million), and the Arizona nurse education investment pilot program ($15 million), but it also includes $5 million earmarked for psilocybin research.
A health care bill, SB-1726/HB-2816, recently receive a hearing on May 10 as well, which shows what that $5 million in research would go toward “research grants for whole mushroom psilocybin phase one, phase two and 41 phase three clinical trials that are capable of being approved by the 42 United States food and drug administration…” The bill cites a number of medical conditions, including PTSD, symptoms of long COVID-19, depression, anxiety disorders, and nine more.
If passed it would instruct the Department of Health Services to open up applications for research, which would be awarded no later than February 1 of each year. The department would be limited to spending a maximum of 2% of the money for psilocybin grant research each fiscal year.
Research subjects would specifically include “veterans, first responders, frontline health care workers … and persons from underserved communities.”
Protections are also included for both the grant receiver as well as any employees working on a study, stating that they “may not be charged with or prosecuted for possession … of psilocybin when the person is working on the clinical trial.”
A psilocybin research advisory council would be tasked to manage the program to provide “recommendations to the governor, the speaker of the House of Representatives, the president of the Senate and the department on psychedelic-assisted therapy based on current federal and state research policy.” It would be made up of multiple key individuals, including a member who holds a federal license to study psychedelics and is a licensed physician, a military veteran, an Arizona law enforcement officer, and a professor or researcher who specializes in psychedelic studies.
On February 13, legislators unanimously passed a different psilocybin research bill in the House Military Affairs & Public Safety Committee, which would have given $30 million in grants to psilocybin researchers. “Today HB 2486 (clinical research; psilocybin; grants; appropriation) passed MAPS Committee by a unanimous vote of 15-0! Thank you to brave bipartisan lawmakers sponsoring this bill to study veterans & first responders! @KevinPayne4AZ @TJShopeforAZ @JenLongdon @TraversforAZ,” said Dr. Sue Sisley, who is well known for her research work on cannabis and psychedelics. HB-2486 has not received any further discussion as of this writing.
While cannabis studies continue to grow, the number of psilocybin research efforts have been growing. In February, city officials in Ferndale, Michigan voted to decriminalize mushrooms as well as other psychedelic substances such as DMT and ayahuasca, and Utah officials introduced a psilocybin bill. In March, Nevada lawmakers introduced a psilocybin and MDMA research bill, and the Missouri House of Representatives approved a psilocybin research bill.
On May 10, Washington State Gov. Jay Inslee signed a bill that creates a psilocybin therapy pilot program, although he did so with a partial veto for specific sections. On that same day, the Connecticut House of Representatives approved a psilocybin decriminalization bill.
Oregon is farthest ahead in terms of progress. Earlier this month, Oregon awarded its first license for a psilocybin service center, following the finalization of rules back in January. “This is such a historic moment as psilocybin services will soon become available in Oregon, and we appreciate the strong commitment to client safety and access as service center doors prepare to open,” said Oregon Psilocybin Services Section Manager Angie Albee.
The post Psilocybin Research Approved in Arizona Appropriations Act Budget appeared first on High Times.
Source: Hightimes
Legal marijuana sales in Connecticut remain stable, with the state reporting $21 million in revenue from medical and adult-use cannabis in April.
The figures, reported on Wednesday by the state Department of Consumer Protection, showed that the newly launched adult-use market recorded $10.2 million in the month of April, while the medical cannabis market brought in $11.4 million.
The $21 million in total sales was only slightly below the sales for the month of March, when the state reported about $22 million in cannabis sales.
The $10.2 million in adult-use sales in April represented a new high for the state’s recreational cannabis market, which launched in January.
Previous sales totals for the adult-use market were $9.5 million in March, $7 million in February and $5.1 million in the inaugural month of January.
The Department of Consumer Protection on Wednesday also provided other figures from April’s sales totals, reporting that medical cannabis patients “purchased 314,985 products, and adult-use consumers purchased 259,499.”
“The average product price for Medical Marijuana patients was $36.51 in April, while the average price of adult-use products was $39.58,” the agency reported.
More from the department:
“This data was collected through the state’s Seed-to-Sale Tracking System. DCP does not make revenue projections, set sales expectations, collect taxes, or regulate prices. The preliminary data does not include taxes collected at the point of sale on adult-use transactions and is subject to further review by the department. Medical marijuana patients do not pay taxes on the purchase of their medicine…Sales data for the medical marijuana market is not available prior to Jan. 10, 2023. Seed-to-sale tracking was not previously required for medical marijuana sales. Adult-use and medical marijuana sales are now recorded in BioTrack, the inventory tracking system used to monitor the movement of cannabis products in the state’s medical and adult-use cannabis markets. Transaction limits of 1/4 ounce of raw flower or the equivalent remain in effect for all adult-use purchases. Medical marijuana patients may purchase up to 5 ounces per month and are not subject to individual transaction limits. The Department will make future data available at ct.gov/cannabis. The data will be updated monthly on or after the 10th of each month, and new data will continue to be added as it becomes available.”
Connecticut legalized recreational cannabis for adults aged 21 and older in 2021, when Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont signed a bill that ended the prohibition and laid the groundwork for the market that launched in January.
“That’s why I introduced a bill and worked hard with our partners in the legislature and other stakeholders to create a comprehensive framework for a securely regulated market that prioritizes public health, public safety, social justice, and equity. It will help eliminate the dangerous unregulated market and support a new, growing sector of our economy which will create jobs,” Lamont said at the time. “By allowing adults to possess cannabis, regulating its sale and content, training police officers in the latest techniques of detecting and preventing impaired driving, and expunging the criminal records of people with certain cannabis crimes, we’re not only effectively modernizing our laws and addressing inequities, we’re keeping Connecticut economically competitive with our neighboring states.”
In December, Lamont announced that, as part of the new cannabis law, he was expunging around 44,000 low level pot-related convictions.
“Especially as Connecticut employers seek to fill hundreds of thousands of job openings, an old conviction for low-level cannabis possession should not hold someone back from pursuing their career, housing, professional, and educational aspirations,” the governor, who was re-elected to a second term in November, said in a statement at the time.
The post Connecticut Takes in $21 Million in Legal Weed Sales for April appeared first on High Times.
Source: Hightimes
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has issued a license to Ohio State University that allows researchers to cultivate psilocybin mushrooms for use in scientific studies. The license, which was awarded to Ohio State and partner Inner State Inc., a mental health and wellness research and development company, is the first license issued by the DEA for the cultivation of whole psilocybin mushrooms for research.
“This license is a major milestone not only for Inner State and Ohio State, but for the entire field of psychedelic research,” Inner State CEO Ashley Walsh said on Wednesday in a statement quoted by the Columbus Dispatch.
Multiple studies have shown that psilocybin, the primary psychoactive compound in magic mushrooms, may have extraordinary potential as a treatment for several serious mental health conditions. But studies of psilocybin normally use forms of the drug that have been synthesized in a laboratory. The new license issued by the DEA allows Ohio State and Inner State to grow whole psilocybin mushrooms to produce the compound naturally. Under the terms of the license, all cultivation of psilocybin mushrooms will take place in a federally registered facility in accordance with strict DEA regulations.
“By combining cutting-edge techniques in genomics and metabolomics, we have the opportunity to obtain a high-resolution picture of the chemical diversity of mushrooms that have remained difficult to study for several decades,” said Ohio State researchers Dr. Jason Slot and Dr. Kou-San Ju.
Researchers believe that using whole mushrooms in mental health studies could give participants the advantage of other compounds besides psilocybin, potentially offering additional therapeutic benefits. Walsh said that it is possible that psilocybin mushrooms “have multi-dimensional healing properties” that could more effectively improve the quality of life for people with severe mental illness.
Continuing research into psychedelics including psilocybin, MDMA and ketamine has shown that the drugs have potential therapeutic benefits, particularly for serious mental health conditions such as depression, addiction and anxiety. A study published in the peer-reviewed journal JAMA Psychiatry in 2020 found that psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy was an effective and quick-acting treatment for a group of 24 participants with major depressive disorder. Separate research published in 2016 determined that psilocybin treatment produced substantial and sustained decreases in depression and anxiety in patients with life-threatening cancer.
In 2017, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration designated MDMA as a breakthrough therapy for PTSD, a move that streamlined clinical trials to test the effectiveness of the drug. The following year, the FDA granted the same status to psilocybin as a breakthrough therapy for treatment-resistant depression.
Alan Davis serves as the director of the Center for Psychedelic Drug Research and Education in the College of Social Work at Ohio State University, which he launched last year with the assistance of a private donation of $1.5 million. The center has developed a 25-hour continuing education program and an undergraduate minor in psychedelic studies. In January, the center launched its first clinical trial to explore the use of psilocybin as a treatment for military veterans diagnosed with PTSD.
“Currently, there have been clinical trials completed for people with addiction, depression, PTSD, obsessive-compulsive disorder, social anxiety [and] end-of-life distress in patients who are terminally ill,” Davis told Columbus Monthly earlier this year. “All of those studies so far have shown really promising effects.”
The ongoing research suggests that treatment with psychedelics such as psilocybin, when combined with psychotherapy, can “reduce and, for some, ameliorate, the mental health problems that they are dealing with,” Davis said. “With some studies, they’ve seen that those positive effects can last six to 12 months.”
Other universities are also studying the therapeutic value of psilocybin and other psychedelics, but Davis says Ohio State is the first to create such a center in a social work setting. He added that educating professionals with social work degrees is essential because they are the biggest part of the workforce dealing directly with patients in a clinical setting.
“Usually, the only message that’s been out there is, ‘drugs are bad, drugs are dangerous, don’t do drugs,’” Davis said. “This is meant to provide that foundational knowledge for people so that they can understand all the interdisciplinary work that’s been done about psychedelics.”
Slot believes that we can learn a lot from mushrooms, noting that government prohibition has hindered study and set back researchers decades during an era of significant advancement in the biological sciences, especially genetics. He hopes that recent efforts to destigmatize psychedelics are successful so that the research can continue to advance.
“I don’t think psychedelics are going away. They get at the nature of consciousness, of the relationship between the mind and the body,” said Slot. “These are questions fundamental to our nature.”
The post Ohio State University Gets DEA License To Grow Psilocybin appeared first on High Times.
Source: Hightimes