IDAHO: Up to 25 Idaho children with persistent seizures will soon have access to an experimental drug derived from marijuana, but experts say far more children could benefit from the treatment.
An April executive order from Gov. Butch Otter is allowing the very limited use of the non-psychoactive drug.
Otter signed the order after vetoing less-restrictive legislation that would have allowed the marijuana extract to be used in children with severe seizure disorders.
Public Service Announcement: 7 states are the party poopers of America. Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Wisconsin, New Mexico and Idaho are the only states—of those where residents were polled—that don’t support legalizing marijuana.
The majority of people in 26 out of 38 states where people were asked about marijuana legalization since 2012 said they supported it, according to a report by The Washington Post. Other states were either divided in opinion or mostly opposed it. For a handful of states, no data was available.
While marijuana legislation mostly happens at the state level, Americans on a national level smoke pot a lot: Nearly 20 million of them said in 2013 that they had used marijuana at some point a month earlier, according to The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. That year, a poll found that 38 percent of Americans have tried marijuana while 7 percent said they were marijuana smokers, Gallup reported.
IDAHO: Gov. Butch Otter has vetoed SB 1146a, the bill that would have allowed parents of Idaho children with an intractable form of epilepsy to treat their kids with cannabidiol, a non-psychotropic oil that’s an extract of cannabis and can halt the children’s repeated, extended and life-threatening seizures. The bill passed after lengthy and emotional hearings during this year’s legislative session. “Of course I sympathize with the heartbreaking dilemma facing some families trying to cope with the debilitating impacts of disease,” Otter wrote in his veto message; you can read it here. But he said there were too many questions about the bill, including from law enforcement and his administration’s Office of Drug Policy, which raised concerns that the bill would open the door to legalizing medical marijuana.
“It ignores ongoing scientific testing on alternative treatments,” Otter wrote. “It asks us to trust but not to verify. It asks us to legalize the limited use of cannabidiol oil, contrary to federal law. And it asks us to look past the potential for misuse and abuse with criminal intent.”
“As an alternative to this legislation, I soon will issue an Executive Order authorizing the Department of Health & Welfare to study, and implement as it deems appropriate, an expanded access program for treatment-resistant epilepsy in children,” Otter wrote. “That program has been approved by the Food & Drug Administration.”
IDAHO: An Idaho House panel has killed a proposal to legalize oil extracted from cannabis plants used to treat children with severe forms epilepsy.
The bill failed to garner enough votes to advance on Monday.
The quick vote came after the House State Affairs panel listened to nearly four hours of testimony, ranging from tearful parents pleading for the bill’s passage to law enforcement representatives wary of the plan’s unintended consequences.
IDAHO: Idaho police say Washington State‘s decision to legalize marijuana is hurting its law enforcement recruitment efforts.
The Lewiston Police Department is finding a serious problem with the grass being greener on the other side
“It has hampered our hiring efforts for sure,” said LPD Sergeant, Jeff Klone.
“Just this past year we were looking for dispatchers and we had several good candidates that did well on the written test, did very well on the oral board but when I ran their background investigation we found out they used marijuana within the last year, most of them because it was legalized in Washington,” said Klone.
IDAHO: An Idaho state trooper arrested and fully searched a 70-year-old Washington man’s vehicle solely because he had a Colorado license plate – a state where marijuana is legal – a federal “license plate profiling” lawsuit alleges.
Darien Roseen was driving along I-84 between his second home in Colorado and Washington state on Jan. 25 when Idaho State Trooper Justin Klitch “immediately” pulled out from the Interstate median and began “rapidly accelerating” to catch up to Roseen, according to the complaint in a Courthouse News Service report.
Exiting at a designated rest area, Roseen says he became “uncomfortable” that Klitch had followed him though he had not “done anything wrong.”
IDAHO: With the recent legalization of marijuana in neighboring states, the impact is being felt in Idaho.
Drug Recognition Expert Sergeant Winas, explained that, “the biggest thing is somebody that goes to one of these where its(marijuana) is legal , they buy it, they smoke it or whatever and then they come back to our state and they wonder why they’re getting in trouble for it, we’ll it’s because it’s still illegal in this state.”
Sergeant Winas’ job is to help police officers who suspect that someone is impaired by a non-alcoholic drug.
“We run a person through a twelve step process; we try to determine what category of drugs that person is under the influence of. There’s a whole battery of tests that we go through to determine the individual’s impairment,” Winas said.
According to Sergeant Winas, Marijuana can be a hazardous substance for motorists.
WASHINGTON: While government agencies in Washington, Colorado and in D.C. ponder the impact of legalizing marijuana, a patchwork of changes are likely already in motion in the bordering states where rules didn’t change. A recent trip to Idaho left me with little doubt of that. [Read more…]
