Marijuana News Roundup: US Attorney General Sessions Gets Tough

In a memo released Friday to all federal prosecutors, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a series of directives that set out the charging and sentencing policies for the U.S. Department of Justice. The memo reverses “any previous inconsistent” policies of the DoJ.

Sessions directs prosecutors to “charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense.” Calling this policy “moral and just,” Sessions goes on to say:

This policy fully utilizes the tools Congress has given us. By definition, the most serious offenses are those that carry the most substantial guidelines sentence, including mandatory minimum sentences.

The effect of this directive is expected to be a return to a harsher sentencing policy for drug offenders, including a return to the days of mandatory minimum sentencing. The stricter enforcement reverses policies promulgated by former Attorney General Eric Holder to reserve the toughest penalties for high-level drug traffickers and violent criminals.

According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, since 2014 the number of mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses has led to a drop of 14% in the federal prisoner population. Under the policy announced Friday, that decline is expected to end and reverse direction.

Retired NFL Players Speak Out About Marijuana and Pain
Ebenezer Ekuban, who played defensive end for nine NFL seasons, told the Washington Post: “Every day, I wake up in pain, from my ankles to my neck. It’s part of the territory. I know what I signed up for.”

“I thought I’d feel better getting away from all those hits, but I was worse off,” Ekuban continued. “A couple blood tests showed elevated liver enzymes. I knew they were from all those painkillers.”

Eugene Monroe, who was released by the Baltimore Ravens last year after calling for the league to permit medical marijuana: “This pain is never going away. My body is damaged. I have to manage it somehow. Managing it with pills was slowly killing me. Now I’m able to function and be extremely efficient by figuring out how to use different formulations of cannabis.”

Read more at The Fresh Toast.

Carl Long Explains Mixup with Sponsor and Removal of Decal
Carl Long apologized on Facebook and explained the confusion with his sponsor, which led to NASCAR ordering him to remove the company’s decal before he went on track on Friday at Kansas Speedway.

Long, who is competing in his first Cup race since 2009, showed up at Kansas with Veedverks on the hood of his car.

NASCAR must approve all sponsors on cars and paint schemes. NASCAR had approved Long’s sponsor, but there was an issue. Long stated on his Facebook page that he misspelled the company’s name when submitting it to NASCAR for approval.

Yahoo! reported that while Veedverks claims its products are legal in all 50 states, its three types of cartridges contain trace amounts of THC, the principal psychoactive in marijuana.

Read more at NBCSports.

Marijuana Use Tied to Poorer School Performance
When high school students started smoking marijuana regularly they were less likely to get good grades and want to pursue university, according to a new study from the University of Waterloo.

The study, published in the Journal of School Health, found that when students started using marijuana at least once a month they were about four times more likely to skip class, two-to-four times less likely to complete their homework and value getting good grades, and about half as likely to achieve high grades, than when they had never used the drug.

The study also asked students the highest level of education they would like and expect to achieve. Results indicated that when students started smoking marijuana daily, their likelihood of reporting ambitions to pursue university, as opposed to stopping at high school or before, was about 50 per cent lower than when they had never used the drug.

Read more at Science Daily.

A Little Cannabis Every Day Might Keep Brain Aging at Bay
In some cultures, it’s traditional for elders to smoke grass, a practice said to help them pass on tribal knowledge. It turns out that they might just be onto something.

Teenagers who toke perform less well on memory and attention tasks while under the influence. But low doses of the active ingredient in cannabis, THC, might have the opposite effect on the elderly, reversing brain ageing and restoring learning and memory – at least according to studies of mice.

“We repeated these experiments many times,” says team leader Andreas Zimmer at the University of Bonn, Germany. “It’s a very robust and profound effect.”

Zimmer’s team has been studying the mammalian endocannabinoid system, which is involved in balancing out our bodies’ response to stress. THC affects us by mimicking similar molecules in this system, calming us down.

The researchers discovered that mice with genetic mutations that stop this endocannabinoid system from working properly age faster than normal mice, and show more cognitive decline. This made Zimmer wonder if stimulating the endocannabinoid system in elderly mice might have the opposite effect.

Read more at New Scientist.