And how many more sick people will needlessly suffer in the great, compassionate state of Massachusetts?
"Labs must test medical marijuana" by Kay Lazar | Globe Staff, May 09, 2013
Massachusetts is the first state that will require independent labs to test the safety and quality of marijuana sold for medical use, under final rules that regulators unanimously approved Wednesday.
The tests will screen for contaminants such as heavy metals, pesticides, and mold. They will also identify and measure the active chemical compounds in the marijuana.
If only they had done that with the compounding companies, but I think we all know why that i$.
An earlier proposal would have allowed marijuana dispensaries to conduct their own testing, but state officials said that to ensure the integrity of the tests, they opted to make Massachusetts the first to require outside screening. Connecticut is considering a similar requirement.
We are such a ground-breaker!
The provision is among dozens of changes made by the Department of Public Health to draft rules the agency released in March, after staff members reviewed hundreds of suggestions from advocates on all sides of the contentious issue.
The revisions will make it easier for families to get marijuana for sick children. They will also require marijuana dispensaries to carry liability insurance in case consumers are harmed, another provision unique to Massachusetts, state officials said.
Because as you have seen, Beacon Hill serves corporate interests, in this case it's the in$urance companies.
Dr. Lauren Smith, the state’s interim public health commissioner, said that while the new rules take effect May 24, it will take months for her department to review and license companies to sell marijuana, set licensing fees, and build an online system to register and track patients and dispensaries.
You know, it almost makes you want to stick with the black market and less hassle. They want to crawl up your ass to see if they can smell a joint.
Oh, yeah, and HOW MANY MORE SICK INDIVIDUALS will SUFFER in the MONTHS of WAIT here in the great, compassionate, liberal fascist democrapy we call Massachus***ts.
“This won’t happen overnight,” Smith said after the vote by the Public Health Council, an appointed body of academics and health advocates.
“I think the public wants to know we did the background steps,” she added. “I don’t think they want a fly-by-night operation.”
This is getting insulting, even if you are stoned.
The Globe reported last month that few credible labs will test marijuana products for contaminants for fear of losing federal government contracts, because medical marijuana is not sanctioned by federal law, say researchers who study the medical marijuana industry.
Translation: You are F***ED, sick person in Massachusetts. Time to move to Colorado or Washington state.
The updated rules aim to address this concern by requiring staff at these independent labs to register with the state, thus giving them some measure of legal protection from possible federal prosecution. The rules also establish a framework of standards and independent accreditation for labs testing marijuana.
"Some" measure? Is that GOOD ENOUGH?
No IMMUNITY like the PHARMACEUTICALS get from the FDA?
Not that the devil's weed would make you sick, especially if you grew your own.
The Coalition for Responsible Patient Care, a trade association of the medical marijuana industry, applauded the independent lab testing requirement.
Then why did they blow smoke in my face?
“If you are selling this as medicine, you need to test it to prove that it is what the dispensaries say it is and that it’s safe to consume,” said treasurer Dorian Des Lauriers....
Another key change is that dispensaries will be allowed to use organic pesticides on their products. Previously, all pesticides would have been prohibited, but that prompted an outcry from growers, who said it is almost impossible to run a large-scale agricultural operation without using some sort of pesticides.
Access to marijuana for children has been a testy issue, and the new rules propose a couple of significant changes.
Here we go.
Patients under age 18 with a debilitating medical condition would not have to also have a life-limiting illness to be eligible for medical marijuana, as required in the earlier version.
Now, written notice from two physicians will allow such patients to override that provision and use marijuana.
Also, the definition for a life-limiting illness has been changed, from one in which a young patient has just six months to live, to one in which a patient may be expected to live as long as two years.
The change, the Public Health Department said, was to align the rules with the definition used in palliative care, which treats patients who have life-threatening, though not necessarily terminal, illnesses.
Physicians at Boston Children’s Hospital and other child advocates had urged regulators to prohibit marijuana use for young patients, saying that there is scant evidence that it is safe or effective and that it may prove especially toxic to still-developing brains.
Other patient advocates argued that young patients suffering with debilitating illnesses such as cancer should not be denied relief of their symptoms, including pain.
The final rules retain a provision that would require marijuana dispensaries to use child-proof packaging on all products, especially marijuana-infused brownies, cookies, and candies, which are often used by patients who are unable or choose not to smoke.
Dr. Sharon Levy, a pediatrician at Boston Children’s Hospital, had urged the state to ensure child-proof packaging because, she said, such sweets would be particularly appealing to children.
“If you are 3 years old, you may not be able to read the warning label,” Levy said in an interview.
I'm just wondering what cashier -- zonked out as they may be on weed -- is going to sell to a three-year-old anything, but hey, why confuse yourself with the outrageous smokescreen being thrown up by the agenda-pushing you-know-who?
In Colorado, which legalized medical marijuana several years ago, there has been a spike in the number of calls to poison control centers about children inadvertently eating marijuana-laced products, said Dr. George Wang, senior toxicology fellow at the Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Center.
Potheads just left the stuff lying around! Sometimes you wonder how they have the wherewithal to pull of an assassination.
“A lot of people think [medical marijuana] is benign, but we are seeing kids come to the hospital,” Wang said.
Are you sure it isn't the cocktail of pharmaceuticals that is turning them into senseless killers by the time they hit 20?
Most of these young patients were treated in the emergency room for extreme sedation, but a few had to be admitted for close observation, he said. None died.
In other words, the kids were put into a marijuana-induced sleep.
Most businesses carry insurance to cover any harm to customers from their products, but some regulators worried that few insurers would be willing to offer coverage to marijuana dispensaries because the drug is not federally sanctioned.
Which is ONE MORE WAY of DELAY just as the state wanted.
But the state Public Health Department said staff members contacted insurers in other states that have approved medical marijuana sales and determined that access to coverage should not be a barrier. So the department’s new rules will require dispensaries to obtain general and product liability coverage.
Yeah, thanks!
Massachusetts would be the first state to have such an explicit requirement, state officials said.
Because as someone once famously said. "Everything is against the law in Massachusetts."
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Related: 4/20: Massachusetts Lets the Joint Go Out
Oh, sorry, readers. I don't smoke the stuff. Sometimes I wish I did. Maybe my anger will light it up for you.
Also see:
"The inspections followed a nationwide fungal meningitis outbreak last year tied to contaminated drugs from a Massachusetts pharmacy. The outbreak sickened more than 700 Americans and killed more than 50 others."
Yeah, who cares about a fungal outbreak that has killed people when someone might be lighting up a joint to relive some pain?
Did anyone go to jail or even been charged?
Related:
"SJC to hear arguments in Annie Dookhan cases" by Travis Andersen | Globe Staff, May 09, 2013
The state’s highest court will consider whether special magistrates can legally free defendants who are seeking new trials based on allegedly tainted drug evidence tied to disgraced former state chemist Annie Dookhan.
And yet they want.... (blogger exhales deeply).
In what could have a far-reaching effect on cases throughout the Commonwealth, the Supreme Judicial Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments on the matter in three related cases on Thursday. Two of the arguments center on a pair of defendants in Essex County and the third involves several procedural questions.
The proceedings pit Essex prosecutors, who argue that the magistrates cannot free so-called Dookhan defendants while their motions for new trials are pending, against defense lawyers and the Superior Court.
Why not? A new trial is going to rely on tainted evidence that is no evidence at all. Out it goes.
The defense lawyers and the court insist the magistrates do have that authority because of the extraordinary circumstances surrounding Dookhan, who allegedly falsified or mishandled suspected drug samples during her tenure at the now-shuttered Hinton state lab in Jamaica Plain.
Defense lawyers say in court filings that her alleged misdeeds and disclosures of oversight issues at the lab may have tainted up to 190,000 cases.
According to court records, the Superior Court established special drug lab sessions last year in several affected counties, including Essex, to handle the abundant litigation stemming from the crisis.
But Essex prosecutors contend that the special magistrates who preside over these sessions lack the authority to free defendants while their motions for new trials are pending. State law, however, allows defendants to be freed if such motions are granted, prosecutors said.
They wrote that in an effort to respond to the drug lab crisis, the Superior Court created new sessions that operated outside the normal rules of the criminal court process.
“Despite the crisis,” they said, “this should not be sanctioned: The rules are in place ‘to provide for the just determination of every criminal proceeding.’ ”
Defense and ACLU lawyers, writing on behalf of the two Essex defendants seeking to have their sentences stayed, counter in court filings that Dookhan’s alleged misconduct warrants such a departure from the normal rules and that an order from the SJC last November allows for it.
By the time the order came down, defense lawyers wrote in a filing, “the Hinton Lab crisis . . . portended thousands of postconviction motions” and there was “the probability that defendants would be denied timely relief not because their filings might lack merit, but instead because their challenges could not be adjudicated punctually even when they have merit.”
Lawyers from Attorney General Martha Coakley’s office, writing on behalf of the Superior Court, echoed those concerns in a related filing.
“That injustice [of questionable evidence] would be compounded if defendants waited months or years for their new trial motions to be resolved due to appropriate, if lengthy, investigation into that same wrongdoing,” the filing states. “Because these are extraordinary circumstances, the usual methods cannot apply.”
Bristol prosecutors have filed an amicus brief with the SJC in support of their Essex colleagues who oppose the release of defendants while their bids for new trials are pending.
Dookhan is facing 27 criminal charges related to mishandling or falsifying drug evidence, as part of a massive review of cases in which she served as the analyst.
She has pleaded not guilty.
Already, hundreds offenders have been released after evidence analyzed by Dookhan was questioned.
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