Unpacking the New York Cannabis Reform Bill

 

In 1996, California became the first state in the US to medical marijuana. Numerous others have followed suit since the landmark legislation from The Golden State. Even historically deep-red states South Dakota and Alabama are reforming their cannabis laws. The tides are shifting, and now the largest market in the US has opened up cannabis use for adults. The New York cannabis reform bill is by far the most progressive legalization plan to date. We will go through what’s in the bill and how lawmakers learned from states like California are decades into their legal cannabis programs.

Office of Cannabis Management

Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act (MRTA) on March 31, 2021, making New York the 17th state, including Washington DC and Gaum, to fully legalize cannabis for adults. A new government agency called the Office of Cannabis Management was created as an extension of the New York State Liquor Authority to regulate recreation, medical, and cannabinoid hemp.

Medical Marijuana

New York residents now have a larger range of medical conditions that could grant them a medical cannabis card. Home cultivation is also allowed for medical cannabis patients, and the number of caregivers allowed per patient was expanded.

Recreational marijuana

Recreational marijuana or ‘adult-use cannabis’ grants separate licenses to businesses wanting to grow or produce cannabis products and sell them at a retail location. The significant difference in the plan is giving economic opportunities to people who were most affected by cannabis prohibition or underrepresented in other states. New York is creating a social equity program with a goal of 50% of licenses going to ‘minority or woman-owned business enterprise, or distressed farmers or service-disabled veterans to encourage participation in the industry.’

Under the new legislation, NY residents can legally possess and transport up to three ounces of cannabis and up to 24 grams of concentrates.

Licenses will be given to businesses operating cannabis consumption sites. The space would be free from alcoholic beverages but operate like lounges or clubs where patrons can consume cannabis indoors. One of the shortcomings in other states was not giving cannabis users legal places to use the newly legal products outside their homes, limiting cannabis tourism, and pushing consumption into public spaces.

Cannabinoid Hemp

The new legislation grants retailers selling CBD and other cannabinoid products, other than THC, the freedom to sell flower. NY legislators also took a stance on the latest cannabinoid to gain mainstream attention, Delta-8 THC, by banning the products altogether.

Revenue Generated from New York Cannabis Reform Bill

The new bill would tax cannabis products based on milligrams rather than weight, another change from the California model. The 13% tax will on all adult-use cannabis products are invested back into the community as follows:

• 40% on education
• 40% to the Community Grants Reinvestment Fund
• 20% to drug treatment and public education

Criminal Justice Reform

After decades of cannabis legalization in states like California, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington, we’ve witnessed some incredible results as well as various shortcomings. The most prominent being the licensing system. The cannabis industry disproportionately favors white men and excludes anyone with a criminal record.

New York is opening up their licensing programs to people who have committed non-violent offenses and focusing on excluding people with a history of financial crimes.

The aspect of the bill we are most excited about is the expungement or resentencing for previous marijuana-related offenses. People incarcerated because of cannabis will get their sentence reduced or thrown out, and people’s cannabis charges on their record will be wiped clean.

The New York Cannabis Reform Bill – A Federal Model to Follow

New York has taken this opportunity to boost the economy and correct past mistakes all in one progressive piece of legislation. If the US federally legalizes cannabis in the future, you can expect to see aspects of the New York cannabis reform bill in the legislation.

Cannabis and telemedicine

 

Before the coronavirus outbreak, many states had not allowed marijuana telemedicine. Telemedicine is a visit between a health care provider and patient through telephone, smartphone, computer, or laptop, and usually involves the use of cameras. With the continuous spread of Covid 19, many people are forced to stay at home, and this has resulted in a high need for telemedicine for medical marijuana patients. Most legal cannabis states now allow medical marijuana telemedicine as an appointment alternative. Currently, we don’t know whether states that temporarily permit marijuana telemedicine will continue their work when emergency provisions/orders on medical marijuana telehealth come to an end in each state. During this period, many states have seen the essence of marijuana dispensaries which have enabled medical marijuana patients to obtain their medicine during the lockdown. 

 

 
The Benefits of Telemedicine Medical Marijuana Evaluations
The increase in the advancement of digital technologies has sparked innovations in different sectors and changed the way we interact and connect. In healthcare, digital technologies have created a revolutionary technological advancement—telemedicine. Although the notion of a virtual doctor’s appointment is not a new phenomenon, it’s only until recently that it's being put into practice.

The ongoing covid-19 pandemic and the strict regulations implemented at the state and federal levels have made it difficult for individuals to visit their local physicians for appointments and evaluations. This has resulted in the use of telemedicine to help solve the problem while also providing several benefits in the process.

This article focuses on the benefits of telemedicine for medical marijuana evaluations.

Medical Evaluation with no stress
Due to recurrent lockdowns, the best way to keep yourself safe is to stay at home and practice social distancing. Telemedicine evaluations make it easy for you to do just that. With telemedicine, a state-licensed medical marijuana practitioner will evaluate you from the comfort, convenience, and safety of your own home.

Higher Patient Reach
While there is a shortage of physicians in the country, the use of telemedicine services can help increase provider networks to make it easier for more individuals to gain access to healthcare. This also involves people willing to schedule appointments for medical marijuana evaluations.

Greater Accessibility
The process of telemedicine evaluations can’t be a burden for patients. After completing the simple registration and sign-up process for your favorite clinic, you can schedule a video-chat appointment with a licensed online physician. After approval, you’ll be qualified to receive your medical marijuana certificate and recommendations. Most telemedicine platforms are also mobile-friendly.

Saves You Time
Since telemedicine gives you access to a doctor instantly, it will save you the time spent traveling to a clinic. You save the time of going through lengthy commutes and waiting room and use that time to take care of yourself.

Medical Marijuana Doctors Also Benefit from Telemedicine
With Telemedicine, doctors can expand their number of consulting patients beyond physical offices and increase office hours. Doctors offering telemedicine as an alternative experience more social distancing and enough space to carry out tasks.

Bottom line
Studies show that patients who have utilized telemedicine aim to do it again. Telehealth offers doctors the chance to create new and more patient-friendly models for the delivery of care.

Discussing medical cannabis with your doctor

 

Many US states have legalized the use of cannabis for medicinal purposes to treat many severe conditions such as nerve pain, nausea, and anxiety. Several studies show that medical cannabis can relieve pain, lessen inflammation, treat nausea, enhance appetite, control epileptic seizures, and more.

Chronic medical conditions can be difficult to treat and usually come with a lot of symptoms. Some people don’t find success in treating these chronic conditions with traditional medicines and are looking for better alternatives such as cannabis. But most people who want to use cannabis don’t know how to communicate it with their doctors due to the stigma surrounding the drug.
While it may be a difficult process to talk to your medical practitioners about cannabis, it’s still a necessary conversation. In this article, we will provide some tips to help you communicate more with your doctor about medical cannabis.

Learn Why Some Doctors Avoid Discussing Cannabis
Some doctors may not like their patients using cannabis products for medical purposes, despite their ability to treat a variety of symptoms. But this resistance is simply a result of the training these doctors receive. Doctors are usually trained in a way that they tend to emphasize more on controlled treatment methods. Doctors may also be sluggish to recommend a drug that has a lot of stigmas.

Discuss the potentials of CBD and Cannabis
The more knowledge you have about cannabis as a treatment, the more information you have to convince your doctor to recommend cannabis. The internet has a lot of articles proving the benefits of cannabis as well as testimonials from parents who have used cannabis compounds on children with epilepsy. Save the most informational study and show it to your doctor during your appointment.

Recent studies on cannabis show that CBD and cannabis products can be very useful for specific health conditions such as chronic pain, inflammatory disorders, anxiety, depression, asthma, seizure disorders, headaches, and nausea. If you suffer from one of these conditions, discuss with your doctor your willingness to use cannabinoids to treat these conditions. Conversations focused on treating a particular symptom with cannabis tend to be more fruitful.

Also, talk to your doctor about the unforeseen consequences of using CBD and cannabis. For example, discuss with your doctor about the possibility of cannabis making you fail a drug test. Also talk about the ability of cannabis to impair your motor function or reaction times, potentially placing your safety at risk in some situations.

Accept Your Doctor’s Verdict
Eventually, your doctor is the most trusted advisor on primary medical care. You have to try to accept your doctor’s final verdict and opinion on whether you should use cannabis or not. Doctors have a wide knowledge of the function of various medications and treatment alternatives — including how they interact with compounds such as THC.
Bottom line
Your doctor accepting of denying the use of medical cannabis as an alternative treatment will mostly depend on how you communicate your purpose of cannabis. But surely your doctor will understand your needs and approve you of medical cannabis under the right circumstances.

Does Cannabis Affect Dreams?

 A dream is something that happens to all of us and while sometimes it can be enjoyable, it can also be disturbing. Dreaming is an essential aspect of our sleep routine that occurs when we enter what is called Rapid Eye Movement or REM sleep. Regularly experiencing REM sleep can improve learning abilities, improve memory, and enhance our moods. The lack of REM sleep can make us dreamless and lead to physical and emotional stress. So, can cannabis affect dreams? As people become more aware of the medical purposes of cannabis, scientists have begun to conduct studies on how it affects dreaming and sleep overall. 

The different stage of dreaming
Sleeping is part of our metabolism and it’s something every human does. We encounter four stages of sleep on an average night.

The first stage is Non-Rapid Eye Movement (NREM) sleep. This is a less intensive sleep that occurs when you’re just beginning to drift off. It’s the period when you’re still alive but yet sleeping. This stage consists of about 5% of our total sleep time.

The second stage is the longest and consists of about half of our sleep. This sleep is intense and usually characterized by slow breaths in which you become less aware of your surroundings. You start experiencing a drop in body temperature and a balanced heart rate.

Stage 3 is the most intense sleep and you become completely unaware of your environment. You also find difficulties recovering from this stage of sleep. When you immediately wake from this stage, you become cognitively impaired and groggy for about an hour because your body hasn’t fully completed the normal sleep routine.

The last stage is the fourth stage, and this is the stage where dreams happen. REM sleep usually lasts for about two hours each night. The dream is due to the increased neural activity that naturally occurs when we sleep.

Cannabis and dreams
Several studies conducted on cannabis and dreams show that THC can block REM sleep while increasing the duration of the other deep sleep stages. This means recurrent cannabis consumers will experience fewer or even zero dreams each day. While THC can make us have a comfortable sleep, it won’t necessarily make you dream in most circumstances. Interestingly, CBD acts differently than THC– consuming CBD will still send you to the REM sleep stage.

Cannabis and dreams are linked in a way that can be beneficial for those who don’t like dreaming and less beneficial for those who like dreaming. Sufferers of PTSD will find cannabis useful as it eliminates REM sleep which can save them from recurrent nightmares that results from the condition. Cannabis improves their overall sleep for patients with sleep disorders.

Bottom line
While dreams can be a way of retaining memories, cope with different emotions, and enhance healthy functionality, they can still pose a threat to many since they can also come with nightmares. Therefore it will mostly depend on your sleep preferences on whether to use cannabis or not.