Cannabis changed Gary Hess\u2019s life after the 41-year-old United States Marine Corps veteran, who suffers from PTSD, tried medical marijuana in California.<\/p>\n
Then the state of Louisiana, where Hess lives and where legal
\nmedical cannabis finally went on sale Tuesday, made Hess\u2019s life much simpler \u2014 at
\nleast in terms of a commute.<\/p>\n
Getting here took \u201conly\u201d four years, and what cannabis Hess found for sale at Capitol Wellness Solutions in Baton Rouge, one of Louisiana\u2019s nine medical-marijuana dispensaries on the first day of sales on Tuesday bears little resemblance to what he saw out West, as the Washington Post reported.<\/a><\/p>\n Still, this is progress \u2014 which indicates how rough cannabis laws Like much of the American South, Louisiana<\/a> still has strict criminal penalties for cannabis users. First-time possession is a criminal offense \u2014 and if you are caught with a joint four times, you can spend up to eight years in state prison, like one of the notorious plantation-style prisons where inmates perform free labor.<\/p>\n As is the sad norm in the United States, most people caught up in the criminal justice system for smoking weed are black: According to a 2013 study conducted by the American Civil Liberties Union, blacks in the state were 3.1 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana-related offenses than whites, despite near-identical rates of use.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t very good, though most visitors to the state need not Despite all this \u2014 or perhaps recognizing the purple streak in state Yet somehow, patients in nearby Arkansas<\/a>, where voters legalized the drug more than a year later in November 2016, managed to enjoy access months earlier. And of the nine dispensaries allowed to do business in the state of 4.66 million, only seven opened for business on Tuesday. (Should we mention that the list of open dispensaries in Oklahoma, which legalized medical marijuana only last summer, is more than 100 pages long<\/a> and that there are more dispensaries on the average block in Tulsa than in the entire state of Louisiana?)<\/p>\n What took so long? Testing, partially, but mostly an imperative for Louisiana allows only two licensed growers to produce medical<\/a> cannabis, both under the auspices of a research university \u2014 one Southern University, the other Louisiana State University.<\/p>\n Only one of the two companies working with the universities has Cannabis advocates have long complained that the state made the Louisiana is also keeping in step with other southern states which To become a patient in the state, one must suffer from a \u201cdebilitating medical\u201d condition. According to the WAFB-9<\/a>, these include \u201ccancer, epilepsy, Parkinson\u2019s disease, intractable pain and\/or HIV.\u201d<\/p>\n And once qualified, patients in Louisiana can only access edibles, The delays irritated state lawmakers as well as cannabis advocates \u201cThe toughest thing has been not being able to give people a In addition to Hess, there were two other patients in line to buy So! Limited supply, limited availability, and high prices \u2014 what advocates believe is \u201cone of the most restrictive programs in the country, if not the most restrictive,\u201d after a four-year wait.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t feel at this point the program is going to be sustainable as it is today,\u201d said Kevin Caldwell, the founder and president of the advocacy group Common Sense NOLA, in an interview with MJ Biz Daily. But it\u2019s better than nothing!<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>, The post After 4-Year Wait, Louisiana Medical Patients Can Get Some Weed<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Cannabis changed Gary Hess\u2019s life after the 41-year-old United States Marine Corps veteran, who suffers from PTSD, tried medical marijuana in California. Then the state of Louisiana, where Hess lives and where legal medical cannabis finally went on sale Tuesday, made Hess\u2019s life much simpler \u2014 at least in termsContinue 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":[50,1986,53,415,5497,11714,339],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37397"}],"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=37397"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37398,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37397\/revisions\/37398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nhave been in this part of the United States, even among the 34 states and
\ngrowing where medical marijuana is available in some form.<\/p>\n
\nworry: Possession in New Orleans, the place out-of-staters are most likely to
\nfind themselves (and in which they might bring cannabis), was decriminalized by
\nthe City Council in 2016 and is now punishable by a $40 fine.<\/p>\n
\npolitics that exists even after the mass exodus of people of color from New
\nOrleans following Hurricane Katrina \u2014 Louisiana was the first state in the Deep
\nSouth to legalize medical cannabis for severely sick people, and it did so via
\nthe legislative process in 2015, rather than a ballot initiative.<\/p>\n
\ncontrol.<\/p>\n
\nbegun submitting product to the state Department of Agriculture and Forestry in
\nlate July. The other parted ways with its initial partner and put in the first
\ncrop only two weeks ago and the state cleared the cannabis for sale on August
\n1.<\/p>\n
\nprocess needlessly lengthy and complicated \u2014 an argument made more convincing
\nwith the relative ease other states made cannabis available.<\/p>\n
\nrestrict heavily what cannabis is available and how it can be consumed.<\/p>\n
\noils, extracts, and via \u201cmetered-dose inhalers.\u201d Cannabis in \u201csmokeable form,\u201d
\nthe form in which most of us know and recognize cannabis, is not allowed.<\/p>\n
\nand (of course) the \u201chundreds\u201d of already-qualified patients forced to sit
\naround and wait for medicine (or continue buying from underground sources).<\/p>\n
\ndefinitive timeline that they could make plans for,\u201d said state Sen. Fred
\nMills, a pharmacist by trade who sponsored the original law, in an interview
\nwith ABC News. Mills \u201cnever thought\u201d it would take so long, and had to field
\nnumerous \u201cdifficult calls\u201d from very sick people inquiring with decreasing
\npatience as to when they\u2019d be able to get the medicine they were promised.<\/p>\n
\ncannabis in Baton Rouge on Tuesday, both of whom suffer from brain cancer.
\nOther dispensaries made sales on Tuesday \u201cby appointment only,\u201d as Marijuana
\nBusiness Daily reported. Products available included a $90 30-cubic-centimeter
\nbottle of CBD-rich \u201csolution\u201d to $200 for the same product but with CBD.<\/p>\n
\ndo you have access to medical marijuana?<\/p>\n
\n
\nRead More: After 4-Year Wait, Louisiana Medical Patients Can Get Some Weed<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"