It would be a stretch to call cannabis extracts \u2014 a near-impossibly broad term that includes oil for vaporizer cartridges and dabbing as well as oral and topical application \u2014 a \u201cluxury.\u201d They are cannabis (medical and\/or recreational as the case, or the interpretation, may be) and they are as vital to the modern-day medical and recreational cannabis user and patient base (and respective industries) as any other cannabis plant-based preparation.<\/p>\n
This is easy to see and most everyone can see it \u2014 just not the Arizona state Court of Appeals. On June 26, the court ruled<\/a> that marijuana extracts, what Arizona law broadly and inaccurately refers to as \u201chashish,\u201d aren\u2019t addressed by the state\u2019s 2010 medical-cannabis law and are thus outlaw contraband.<\/p>\n The ruling is on appeal, and the state\u2019s cannabis dispensaries and providers have declared that they\u2019ll continue selling oil in its many forms, which represents a steadily increasing percentage of overall marijuana sales<\/a>. In the meantime.<\/p>\n It\u2019s yet unclear if their defiance will go unpunished by state law enforcement or regulators, but either way, the ruling is a serious problem for Arizona<\/a> cannabis patients including, as the Phoenix New Times pointed out, the epileptic children who rely on a CBD-rich cannabis oil preparation to stop their seizures.<\/p>\n How is whole-plant extract oil \u201chashish,\u201d you might well ask? And how is the oil put into low-dose edibles<\/a> the same as the wax for a dab rig<\/a>? It\u2019s not and it\u2019s really not, obviously, and yet here we are.<\/p>\n The bad ruling stems from a bad case in which a medical-marijuana patient named Rodney Jones was arrested and jailed for possessing a small amount of marijuana extract in a jar. Jones was a card-carrying legal cannabis patient when he was arrested in 2013 and sentenced to two-and-a-half years in jail. (And since you were curious: yes, he is black.)<\/p>\n \u201cAMMA [the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act] is silent as to hashish,\u201d wrote Judge Jon W. Thompson wrote in the 2-1 decision. \u201cPrior understanding of the pertinent words strongly indicates that AMMA in no way immunizes the possession or use of hashish. That AMMA immunizes medical use of a mixture or preparation of the marijuana plant does not immunize hashish.\u201d<\/p>\n The judge may have a point. Arizona\u2019s 2010 voter-approved law defines legal cannabis as \u201cusable marijuana\u201d that comes from \u201cthe dried flowers of the marijuana plant, and any mixture or preparation thereof.\u201d You may argue that extracts would qualify as a \u201cmixture.\u201d And maybe it does. The problem is the separate definition elsewhere in Arizona law for \u201chashish,\u201d and its absence from AMMA.<\/p>\n \u201cIf the drafters wanted to immunize the possession of hashish they should have said so,\u201d the judges continued, taking what could be called a \u201cstrict constructionalist\u201d interpretation of medical marijuana. \u201cWe cannot speculate that the voters, in allowing the limited use of marijuana to ameliorate patients\u2019 suffering and distress, would, if they also intended to similarly immunize the use of hashish, have allowed the same quantity of narcotics as of the relatively benign flowers of the marijuana plant.\u201d<\/p>\n The issue is not new, and as the New Times reported, has been litigated and re-ligitated in various courts throughout the state since at least 2014, with various rulings. At times, patients\u2019 rights to use extracts have been upheld by courts; at others, judges have sided with district attorneys \u2014 and provided a precedent followed by the appeals court \u2014 by pointing out the \u201chashish\u201d versus \u201cmixture\u201d distinction.<\/p>\n On July 2, the New Times reported that at least 17 patients plan to file a lawsuit against the state challenging the appeals court\u2019s ruling and arguing for medical cannabis extracts as an explicit right. Whether or not they are successful, the episode is an object lesson for other states as well as Arizona patients: any ambiguity can and will be used against them.<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/strong>\u00a0do you think the Arizona medical marijuana law should also allow for concentrates?<\/p>\n The post Cannabis Oil Is in Trouble in Arizona<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
It would be a stretch to call cannabis extracts \u2014 a near-impossibly broad term that includes oil for vaporizer cartridges and dabbing as well as oral and topical application \u2014 a \u201cluxury.\u201d They are cannabis (medical and\/or recreational as the case, or the interpretation, may be) and they are asContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[200,50,240,1205,90,139],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27723"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27723"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27724,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27723\/revisions\/27724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nRead More: Cannabis Oil Is in Trouble in Arizona<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"