Marijuana Blog

A day before a scheduled vet appointment to euthanize her dog, Wendy Mansfield decided to try one last resort to alleviate the chronic pain of her 15-year-old labrador mix: cookies from a marijuana dispensary made specifically for ailing dogs.

Kali, a mild-mannered 80-pound rescue, was never much of a complainer. But she often licked her paws—an obvious sign of pain, according to her vet—which was typically accompanied by bouts of coughing because of the shedding fur that got in her throat. One treat and 20 minutes later, the licking suddenly stopped.

Seeing this, Mansfield, who lives in Fort Bragg, California, gave her dog a second cookie, and then a third. Kali, who had been listless and depressed, got up to drink some water and walked outside—something she hadn’t been able to do recently without groaning or obvious signs of pain.

Mansfieldthen called the vet to cancel her appointment. That was three weeks ago. “Never in my wildest dreams would I have anticipated this,” she tells Quartz. “It brought my dog back.”

With marijuana flourishing into big business in the US, a new segment of the market catering toward aging and ailing pets has been growing under the radar. The legal weed market raked in $2.7 billion in revenue in 2014, and one estimate by the ArcView Group, a network that connects investors with cannabis startups, projects the industry to top$10 billion in sales by 2018.

The pet-pot market is treading on new territory, however. The legal gray area is posing challenges for companies to market and distribute cannabis-derived products for animals. There’s also insufficient scientific backing and industry guidelines. Still, that’s not deterring desperate pet owners, like Mansfield, or keeping investors from getting on board.

Read More:http://qz.com/377887/the-marijuana-industrys-newest-customers-are-sick-and-elderly-dogs/

 Harlequin (Hybrid)

Harlequin is a 75/25 sativa-dominant hybrid that is popular for pain relief. This strain has been known to have particularly high levels of CBD making it a favorite of medical patients.

Marijuana prohibition in the US is dying, but it isn’t going to vanish in one fell swoop. Even if Congress were to repeal federal pot prohibition, state laws criminalizing the plant and its users would still be in effect—at least in some states.

And it’s probably a pretty safe bet that Congress isn’t going to act until a good number of states, maybe more than half, have already legalized it. That process is already underway and is likely to gather real momentum by the time election day 2016 is over.

Colorado and Washington led the way in 2012, followed by Alaska, Oregon, and Washington, DC, last year. California, where one out of every eight Americans lives, is very likely to go green in 2016 via the initiative process, and so are a handful of other states, including Maine, Massachusetts, and Nevada. Longer shots next year (or even this year, in Ohio’s case) are Arizona, Michigan, Missouri, and Ohio.

But just as the end of federal alcohol prohibition in 1933 didn’t mean the end of state-level prohibition—Mississippi didn’t end it until 1966, you couldn’t drink in a bar in Kansas until 1987, and dry counties remain in a number of states—ending federal marijuana prohibition isn’t going to magically make it legal everywhere.

There are two critical factors to consider in assessing how likely a state is to get around to freeing the weed: public opinion and access to non-legislative (read: initiative and referendum) political remedies.

Opinion polls consistently show stronger support for legalization in the West and the Northeast than in the Midwest and the South. But barring access to the initiative process—which only half the states have—means that even in states where public opinion strongly favors legalization, residents are going to be beholden to the legislature to get it done. Note that so far, every state that has legalized it has done it through the initiative process. That could change this year, but it seems unlikely at this point.

But even having the initiative process isn’t going to help if popular support is lacking.  That’s why some states make the list even though they have the initiative process. And even having public opinion on your side isn’t going to guarantee victory in the legislature, especially if the Republicans are in control.

Here are the nine states least likely to legalize it anytime soon and, after that, a few brief notes on a handful of states:

Read More:http://www.theweedblog.com/to-the-bitter-end-the-nine-states-where-marijuana-will-be-legalized-last/

Sour Grapes (Hybrid)

A hybrid of Grape Ape and the legendary Sour Diesel, this strain is gaining more and more popularity. The buds are medium-sized, light-green and astonishingly coated with sticky trichromes. The aroma from these near-perfect nugs is fragrantly similar to white wine, citrus and fruit, with undertones of sour dank. The buds are somewhat fluffy and noticeably soft.