States across the country now consider pot shops “essential” services and anxious Americans are flocking to them.

Cannabis is turning out to be the one thing the coronavirus can’t destroy.

Marijuana sales are booming, with some states seeing 20 percent spikes in sales as anxious Americans prepare to be hunkered down in their homes potentially for months. Weed sellers are staffing up too, hiring laid-off workers from other industries to meet demand. And in the midst of a historic market meltdown, stock prices for cannabis companies have surged, in some cases doubling since the public health crisis began.

“We are hiring because we are having to shift our business a bit,” said Kim Rivers, CEO of Trulieve, which is valued at $1 billion. The company is staffing up its delivery fleet, retail workers, and people to handle increased inventory shipments. “Now is a great time [to apply], particularly if you’re in a business that has seen layoffs.”

Nearly all of the 33 states with legal medical or recreational markets have classified marijuana businesses as an essential service, allowing them to remain open even as vast swaths of the retail economy are shuttered. San Francisco and Denver initially announced plans to shut down dispensaries, but immediately backpedaled after a public furor.

Weed shops are essentially being treated the same as pharmacies, reflecting a dramatic shift in cultural perceptions about the drug over the last decade.

“It is a recognition that it has taken on much greater significance around the country,” said Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), a longtime Capitol Hill champion for cannabis. “This is something that makes a huge difference to the lives of hundreds of thousands of people every day. I do think that this might be part of a turning point.“

Continue Reading at Politico.com

Jim Belushi says the tragic death of his brother John (the actor, comedian and musician known for his roles on sketch comedy show “Saturday Night Live,” “National Lampoon’s Animal House” and the cult classic film “The Blues Brothers”) in 1982 ripped a hole in his family, leaving trauma and pain. “Addiction enters a family like a snake and starts to squeeze until somebody dies,” he says. “It collapses families.”

A famed actor, comedian and musician in his own right, Belushi spent years wrestling with John’s death, searching for meaning and purpose to it. It wasn’t until 2016, when he began cultivating cannabis on a farm he had acquired in Eagle Point, Ore., that he started to find answers to his questions. He’s not sure why cannabis cultivation appealed to him, but he’s adamant that he’s a changed person for it.

“Why am I doing this? I don’t know. I kind of stumbled into it, but it’s leading me to an understanding of my own brother’s death, the trouble that it caused in my family, the collapse of my family,” Belushi says. “And ever since I’ve been working with this cannabis, I’ve come a long way in healing all of that.”

With that newfound perspective, Belushi feels a responsibility to use his celebrity status to build a business that might help other individuals and families process their traumas. Thus, Belushi’s Farm was born.

Continue story at Cannabis Business Times

On September 25, 2000, Paul Pierce was stabbed 11 times in the face, neck, and back at a Boston nightclub. The NBA star was rushed to a nearby hospital where he underwent emergency lung surgery. Two men were later sentenced for the attack.

Miraculously, Pierce returned to the court just a few months later to finish off the season. But his internal wounds lasted much longer. Pierce suffered from intense anxiety, depression, and PTSD. He hired a 24-hour security to guard his home and couldn’t be around large crowds. The harrowing experience led him on a journey to find relief for his symptoms beyond the addictive meds his doctors prescribed.

Eventually, Pierce discovered cannabis, and specifically CBD, which offered a natural path to healing. After playing 19 years in the league, Pierce has begun a new career as co-founder (with Elliot Mermel) and CEO of The Truth CBD Remedies and the Vesper One vape (available through Eaze Wellness).

On the podcast, Pierce talks about how he went from being a CBD advocate to a CBD entrepreneur. He’s joined by business partner, Elliot Mermel.

JON: So Paul, let’s start with you. First of all, congratulations on the product. It’s very cool, and I’m happy that you are a part of the cannabis world.

PAUL: Oh man, thank you. I’m excited that I can be a part of this and just bring a stability to the marketplace, somebody who’s somewhat trustworthy and already has a name out there and a voice and a platform that people can trust.

To continue go to GreenEntrepreneur.com

Chronic pain patients consuming hemp-derived cannabidiol, or CBD, on a daily basis for eight weeks reported a decrease in the opioid medications they needed, a new study reports.

“This is a prospective, single-arm cohort study for the potential role of cannabinoids as an alternative for opioids,” the paper states. “The results indicate that using the CBD-rich extract enabled our patients to reduce or eliminate opioids with significant improvement in their quality of life indices.”

The study, published this month in Postgraduate Medicine, sheds new light on the potential benefits of CBD extracted from hemp, a crop that became federally legal under the 2018 Farm Bill, although the Food and Drug Administration has yet to issue finalized guidelines that would allow CBD to be sold in dietary supplements and food products.

Researchers recruited 131 patients who obtain their care from the same pain clinic; 97 completed the eight-week follow-up period. All had been diagnosed with chronic pain and were taking opioid medications for relief.

For the study, participants were given a 60-count bottle of hemp-derived, CBD-rich soft gels. Each gel, according to the study, contained 15.7 mg CBD, 0.5 mg THC, 0.3 mg cannabidivarin, 0.9 mg cannabidiolic acid, 0.8 mg cannabichrome, and less than 1 percent of a botanical terpene blend. Nearly all (91) took two gel caps a day, totaling 30 mg of CBD; three participants opted not to use the hemp extract at all.

For more visit marijuanamoment.net

When Scott McCarron returned to his locker after a round in the 2018 Boca Raton Invitational, a bottle of CBD oil pills had been placed in the cubby by Functional Remedies EndoSport. It’s not unusual for professional golfers to have various products given to them to sample, but this one in particular was intriguing to the No. 1-ranked player on the PGA Champions Tour.

McCarron didn’t know a great deal about CBD oil, but he knew enough from research and talking to other athletes who had taken cannabidiol (CBD), a supplement derived from the hemp plant, to realize that it might be able to help with some of his ailments.

“I went and tried it about two weeks later when I went home. I measure my sleep with a device called WHOOP,” McCarron said. “That’s a sleep and strain device. Major League Baseball, NFL and Olympic athletes use the device. For the first time in about two years that I’d been wearing the device, I was taking the CBD oil, started on Monday and had sleep in the green, which is fantastic sleep, for seven days straight the first time I took this CBD oil at night to help me sleep.”

McCarron has now been using the products for nearly two years and is among a growing list of PGA Champions Tour players using CBD oil for various reasons, including sleep, recovery, anxiety and inflammation. Through word of mouth of the perceived benefits, the products have spread on the Champions Tour.

Despite its open popularity among the senior players, it has taken longer to surface as an acceptable practice to discuss publicly with the PGA Tour players. That is rapidly changing, though, as the perception of and education about the product are growing as well.

For more visit ESPN.com

Ever since Olivia Newton-John’s first breast cancer diagnosis in 1992, the pop icon’s family, friends, and fans have been there cheering her on. But even as she’s publicly battled the disease, she’s never let it define her: In fact, since her cancer came back in 2013 (and again in 2017), she’s used it as inspiration to help others by opening her own public hospital: the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Wellness & Research Centre, in Australia.

Now, on Thursday, Olivia is speaking at a cannabis conference in Portland — which is probably the last piece of news you ever expected to hear about the Grease star. But since publicly announcing her third cancer diagnosis (this time, stage four breast cancer that has metastasized to her bones) in September 2018, Olivia has been open about how she’s been using the plant to treat her pain and other symptoms. She admits to being hesitant to try it at first (considering the stigma that still exists around marijuana) but her husband of 11 years, John Easterling, convinced her to take the leap.

For more visit msn.com