Marijuana is a gateway drug that’s associated with violent crime. But kids in Washington aren’t using the drug at higher rates since it was legalized and it has no conclusive link to mental illness.
Those were two of the claims made respectively by local law enforcement and the county’s public health officer at a Clark County Council work session Wednesday morning. Although Washington voters legalized cannabis in 2012, Clark County passed a ban on recreational cannabis businesses in the unincorporated areas two years later.
The county council previously reconsidered the ban, but backed off last year. After the council’s composition changed following November’s elections, the council is again moving toward lifting the ban.
Councilors Temple Lentz, Julie Olson and John Blom have expressed varying degrees of openness to lifting the ban while council Chair Eileen Quiring has opposed it. Councilor Gary Medvigy, who was appointed to the council in January, said after the meeting that he’s..

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It’s probably not a good idea — and it can’t be great for productivity — but that’s not stopping a lot of Washingtonians from doing it.
I’m talking about getting high at work.
One in four marijuana users who are employed admit to doing this within the past year, according to a new survey of cannabis consumers in Washington, Oregon and Colorado, three states where recreational weed is legal.
One in four also said they’ve gotten high before work.
The marketing communications firm Quinn Thomas, which has offices in Seattle and Portland, funded the survey, which was conducted by polling-and-opinion outfit DHM Research. A representative sample of 900 cannabis consumers were interviewed — 300 in each of the three states — from Jan. 8 to 14. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percent.
“There is a lot of information out there about the cannabis industry and its regulatory structure, but not much is known about consumers,” said Zach Knowling, vice president at Quinn Thom..

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The joint you smoked last night won’t give you schizophrenia. It also won’t make you assault your neighbor.
You might not know that after reading a recent New Yorker article that draws connection between marijuana use, schizophrenia and violent crimes in Washington.
In the article — “Is Marijuana as Safe as We Think?” — writer Malcolm Gladwell focused on a 2017 report by the National Academy of Medicine that examined the scientific evidence of the health effects and therapeutic purposes of cannabis and cannabinoids. Gladwell’s article also draws on a new book by former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson called “Tell Your Children: The Truth about Marijuana, Mental Health and Violence.”
Gladwell’s article and a subsequent New York Times op-ed by Berenson, was quickly rebuked by marijuana researchers and legalization advocates, who took issue with Gladwell’s selective use of data and Berenson’s linking marijuana use to schizophrenia.
Beatriz Carlini, a senior research scientist at..

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DETROIT — Michigan voters on Tuesday made their state the first in the Midwest to legalize recreational marijuana, passing a ballot measure that will allow people 21 or older to buy and use the drug and putting conservative neighboring states on notice.
Three other states had marijuana-related measures on their ballots. North Dakota voters decided recreational pot wasn’t for them, while voters in Missouri passed one of three unrelated measures to legalize medical marijuana. Utah voters also were considering whether to allow medical marijuana and to join the 31 other states that have already done so.
Including Michigan, 10 states and the District of Columbia have legalized recreational marijuana. And Canada recently did so. But the passage in Michigan gives it a foothold in Middle America and could cause tension with neighboring Indiana and Ohio, which overwhelmingly rejected a 2015 legalization measure.
“Troopers that work along the state line are very cognizant of what’s going on u..

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Cannabis should be added to the North American Free Trade Agreement just like any other form of produce, says former Mexican President Vicente Fox.
Fox, who sits on the board of Toronto-based medical marijuana producer Khiron Life Sciences Corp., said he expects Mexico’s new government to legalize recreational cannabis in 2019. The country legalized medical pot in 2017.
Fox has long advocated for legal cannabis, arguing that it will help defeat the cartel violence that has plagued Mexico for years.
“We can change criminals for businessmen, we can change underground, illegal non-taxpayers into an industry, a sector of the economy,” he said Thursday in an interview in Toronto, where he met with Khiron’s board. “I think it should be part of NAFTA and that’s what I’m pursuing.”
If that happens, Mexico could become a major exporter of legal cannabis to the U.S. and Canadian markets, Fox said.
“On vegetables, on fruits, on avocados, Mexico produces and provides up to 70 percent of the U..

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