The Marijuana Policy Project has mended ties with activists and dispensary representatives, so the group officially filed its weed ballot measure with the Secretary of State's Office Friday to begin the signature gathering campaign. This comes less than one month after a plan B group—Arizonans for Responsible Legalization—headed by MPP of Arizona's former campaign chairwoman Gina Berman came out with news that it'd be putting forward its own initiative, because they were not happy with the dispensaries' end of the stick.

Over the last few days, members of ARL traveled to D.C. and met with MPP leaders to discuss a middle ground for regulatory issues and other disagreements with the industry's proposed business structure and licensing. And, to make sure activists stayed on board, MPP put home cultivation rights back on the measure.

"Not everybody is happy with the language, I am not in love with all of the components, but we have the best compromise we are going to get," says Mikel Weisser, political director of Safer Arizona, the group that fought hard for homegrown weed language to make the initiative. 

Weisser was the only non-MPP member who participated in the announcement event in Phoenix Friday afternoon. 

"They wanted me there to show that we weren't going to face another split," he says. "Safer Arizona is going to continue to work in the activist community to make sure that all of Arizona gets included in the legalization and in the movement. The central MPP committee is going to pretty much focus on the mainstream message, leaving Safer Arizona to look at the folks not being included in the Arizona political discussion."

Weisser believed that if the two groups couldn't work it out, legal weed in Arizona would have been boycotted again. 

The ballot measure would allow adults 21 and up to buy no more than an ounce of pot through a state-licensed retailer or dispensary. An adult 21 or older would be able to grow six plants and there will be a limit of no more than 12 plants per household. There is a license, worth $7,500, for people who want to sell their pot, without jumping into a full-on dispensary.

MPP expects taxes, set at 15 percent, to bring revenue of between $60 million and $100 million. The funds would go toward sales regulation, education and public health efforts. 

Safer Arizona plans to host a series of public forums to answer everyone's weed questions. They'll also be at the forefront of gathering signatures. The measure needs 150,642 by June 2016 to make it on the ballot.

Other states targeted by MPP to legalize ganja next year are California Nevada, Massachusetts and Maine.

Colorado and Washington legalized recreational pot in 2012. Oregon, Alaska and D.C. gave it the go last year.

PS: Happy 4/20!

Arizona is going to be on the spotlight this Sunday on CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta's Weed 3: The Marijuana Revolution.
Gupta followed Sue Sisley—who was ousted from the University of Arizona last summer (she says because of political pressure over the "controversy" of her marijuana research)—to discuss her study on medical marijuana as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. 

Also, veteran and medical pot patient Sean Kiernan, who is the founder of Veterans for Doctor Sue Sisley MD & PTSD Research, and his struggle with PTSD and other conditions will be featured. He has been at the forefront of helping Sisley find a home for her study (UA and NAU flat out refused to help and ASU never got back to her, so Sisley is working on moving forward on her own, along with the help of her supporters, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies).

Prominent Arizona medical marijuana researcher Sue Sisley has given up on any of the state's public universities to house the research she's been doing for years on the effects pot has on post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms.

Sisley brought that research to the University of Arizona close to five years ago, and got approval from the Food and Drug Administration in 2011 and the Public Health Service last March. She was then laid off from the UA this past summer, and she had been hoping to continue her research at NAU or ASU. 

A few months later, NAU's president passed on the study, so Sisley and the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, which sponsors the research, turned to ASU—that move, too, without any luck.

Veterans who suffer from PTSD and other advocates for months pleaded the Arizona Board of Regents to keep the study here, but the demand was ignored.

On Friday, MAPS' Executive Director Rick Doblin sen this message:

It's now February 20, 2015, about eight months after Sue initiated discussions with ASU about possibly hosting our marijuana/PTSD study. Despite all this time, Sue has not received an offer of an unpaid academic appointment and our questions about how we might interact with the ASU press office have not been addressed.

In order for us to proceed with our study, we are going to go forward with submitting our protocol to an independent IRB and will conduct the study without affiliation with ASU. It's a shame and intellectually backward that no academic institution in Arizona was willing to work with Dr. Sisley on the first controlled study to ever be conducted on a matter of crucial importance to the many veterans and others suffering from PTSD who live in Arizona and elsewhere.

In December, Sisley and MAPS were awarded $2 million from the Colorado Board of Health for the research.

While approval and funding are in place, the National Institute on Drug Abuse still has to give Sisley her pot. A process she's said it's taken too long, since they've already overcome all federal hurdles. 

State Sen. Lynne Pancrazi, a Democrat from Yuma, has introduced a bill asking for the creation of an industrial hemp study committee to examine the economic opportunities associated with the industry and to review actions the federal government and other states regarding hemp.

The one-page bill, SB 1225, lists the people who should be a part of this study committee, including two members of the state Senate appointed by the Senate president, two members of the state House appointed by the speaker, the director of the Arizona Department of Agriculture, and the dean of the UA's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. There would also be representatives of a statewide farm association.

This committee would have to look into the benefits of establishing a hemp industry here in Arizona, and then present their results on or before Sept. 1, 2016.

One of the gubernatorial hopefuls, Americans Elect candidate John Lewis Mealer, used the hemp industry as one of the platforms to improve the state's economy should he had been elected. During his campaign last year, he reinforced his support for the "trillion-dollar" industry. Mealer actually owns an automobile company, where he hopes to incorporate car panels made from industrial hemp one day.

Also, industrial hemp research is mentioned in the Agriculture Act of 2014, or the Farm Bill. A section of the law authorizes university institutions or state departments, where hemp is legal, to grow hemp for research purposes. Hemp hasn't been grown in the U.S. since 1957, according to the advocacy group Vote Hemp.

Arizona lawmakers pushed for a bill last year that would have given hemp farming the green light here, but that didn't survive. It was voted down by the Senate Judiciary Committee February 2014.

This one will likely not survive either in our very conservative state Legislature. Although, it should not be blown off, since the hemp industry could bring good money here. You can create a lot of things from it, from oil to shoes.

Former Real Housewives of New York cast member Bethenny Frankel (don't lie to yourself. You know exactly who I'm talking about, because you, too, watch the Housewives and then feel like shit about it) wants to create munchies-free cannabis as part of her Skinnygirl brand.

Her Skinnygirl cocktails, which include moscato wine, margaritas of various flavors, cosmos, flavored vodkas and more, are already doing pretty well, multi-million dollars type of well, because they are tasty and don't have many calories.

According to several sources, including the most reliable TMZ, Frankel is working to create a strain of pot that doesn't make you want to eat all that's in front of you after smoking it. She'll find a great market in Oregon, Washington state, Colorado and Alaska...and in the next few years, many more states that want to legalize weed, possibly Arizona!

Pot-smoking friends, would you try it?

Dispensary marijuana sales tripled from 2013 to last year, according to an end-of-year medical marijuana report published by the Arizona Health Services this week.

In numbers from January 2014 to last month, there were close to 1.45 million individual sales among the reported 55,000 medical marijuana patients in the state, totaling 10 tons of marijuana. Patients between 18 and 30 bought the most pot than any other age group, Health Director Will Humble said.

In 2013, those figures were  2.7 tons sold in 433,000 transactions to 41,000 cardholders.

This hike is attributed to the fact that people who live within 25 miles of a dispensary cannot grow their own pot, something that had been recently challenged in a lawsuit filed in Maricopa County against the state health department. The more dispensaries there are, the less people will be able to cultivate marijuana as stipulated by the Medical Marijuana Act. As of now, health services' figures show that there are about 85 dispensaries around the state, so a lot of people live close to one.

Medical marijuana users out there, what do you prefer? Is it better to grow your own, or are you a dispensary regular?

Yesterday, Colorado state's Medical Marijuana Scientific Advisory Council recommended eight medical MJ research grants for funding, including $2 million for fired UA researcher Sue Sisley, doing groundbreaking research on use of MJ to treat veterans with post traumatic stress disorder. A final decision will be made next month.

As always, you have to think of the children, and since several in Colorado have apparently gotten sick by eating marijuana edibles, regulators in the state are considering several routes to increasing safety, including severely restricting the type of edibles available, possibly to just hard lozenges and tinctures.

"If the horse wasn't already out of the barn, I think that would be a nice proposal for us to put on the table," said Karin McGowan, the department's deputy executive director.

Talking to reporters after the workgroup reviewed the department's proposal, McGowan insisted the edibles ban was just one of several proposals under review by pot regulators.

Lawmakers have ordered state pot regulators to require pot-infused food and drink to have a distinct look when they are out of the packaging. The order came after concerns about the proliferation of pot-infused treats that many worry could be accidentally eaten by children.

It does seem likely that some sort of increased distinction between a cannabis-infused edible item and its mainstream counterpart might be necessary, especially for items that come in a multiple-use option, but a ban seems somewhat impossible, considering a) edibles are quite popular and b) people can still make their own edibles, even if they can't buy them in stores. Still, Colorado (and Washington) are interesting test cases for the seemingly inevitable day when a fuller form of legalization hits Arizona and THC gummy bears (and the like) are available to a non-card holding general public.

Republican Rep. Ethan Orr probably couldn't get marijuana/PTSD researcher Sue Sisley reinstated at the UA if he tried, but convincing his pot-paranoid fellow lawmakers to decriminalize marijuana to refill the state treasury?

Well, a guy can try—after all it's election season. Orr happens to be running for re-election for his District 9 seat.

Orr is looking at Colorado, which recently made marijuana legal and taxes, licenses and fees have brought the state more than $7 million so far.

H/T Arizona Republic:

Revenue projections provided Tuesday to the Legislature's Finance Advisory Committee predict the state will end this budget year with a $520 million deficit and an up to $1 billion deficit in the coming fiscal 2016.

"Given the massive budget shortfall we're facing, we need to look at revenue and I think this is a logical place we need to look," Orr said. "I think it's time to have an intelligent conversation about it (legalization)."

Similar attempts to decriminalize pot have failed in recent years.

Orr said lawmakers should consider his proposal before supporters of an effort to legalize recreational marijuana take their measure before voters in 2016.

The Marijuana Policy Project of Arizona initiative almost certainly will be modeled after the voter-approved marijuana program in Colorado.

For about a year, Colorado has allowed adults 21 and older to buy and possess up to an ounce of pot, which can be purchased at one of the many marijuana shops allowed under the law.

Colorado's 2013 measure taxed recreational marijuana at 25 percent and earmarked $40 million in tax revenue for school construction.

The state's Legislative Council recently estimated Colorado can expect to bring in about $175 million through the fiscal year that ends in 2017.

All this marijuana election-season talk is on the heels of the Marijuana Policy Project of Arizona getting permission from the state to start raising campaign funds for their citizen's initiative to legalize marijuana to go before voters in 2016.

While no announcement has been made by Arizona State University on if it plans to make a home for part of terminated UA researcher Sue Sisley's study on treating PTSD-suffering veterans with marijuana, over the weekend a story in The Las Vegas Review-Journal said University of Nevada, Las Vegas, is a possible destination.

Wow, what a concept. Nevada lawmakers, federal and state, are working to bring Sisley to Nevada and UNLV welcomes the research. Civilization and academic freedom—in Las Vegas.

H/T The Las Vegas Review-Journal:

Nevada’s state and federal lawmakers have been working to bring medical marijuana researcher Dr. Sue Sisley to the university to conduct a pilot study on the safety and efficacy of marijuana on veterans with chronic and treatment-resistant post-traumatic stress disorder.

While the study would be financially supported by sponsors and not receive any federal money, it has received all the federal approvals, said Sisley, who has been working on securing the study since 2011. She is hoping the university will provide the research space.

“That was a miracle in itself,” said Sisley of the potential early-phase drug development trial. “We had to hurdle four different obstacles to get to a point where we could actually research. It was a big achievement, and we were really close to getting implemented.”

She would study five different strains of marijuana that would be smoked or vaporized and inhaled by 70 veterans. The goal is to develop a marijuana drug in plant form approved by the Food and Drug Administration. It would be the first and only randomized controlled trial in the country looking at marijuana in treating post-traumatic stress disorder.

Sisley’s desire to study medical marijuana’s impact grew out of her daily physician work with veterans suffering from PTSD at the University of Arizona’s medical school in Phoenix.

The study could be in association with the University of Denver and Johns Hopkins University medical schools through the University of Nevada, Las Vegas psychology department’s community health clinic program.

UNLV OKS REQUIRED

UNLV College of Liberal Arts Dean Christopher C. Hudgins said the health clinic program provides research and services to the community in collaboration with the College of Education’s counseling and educational psychology program.

“This would fit well within that if the psychology department agrees that this would be a good appointment,” said Hudgins, adding that the position would not receive any state money.

Sisley gave a presentation Sept. 22 to the psychology department’s faculty board about joining as a research faculty member.

The board will give its recommendation to Thomas Piechota, UNLV’s vice president for research and economic development.

Piechota said the university might take a little longer to review any potential offer because of its connection to medical marijuana.

“This type of research is certainly good research to be looking at inside the university,” Piechota said. “There’s so much unknown in terms of the effects of medical marijuana on these types of issues.”