Reforms to the Netherland’s opaque cannabis laws are finally underway after an agreement was struck on a four-year trial to provide cafes with a legal and regulated supply of the product.

Under existing law, cannabis can be sold over the counter in licensed coffee shops, but it is illegal to produce and supply the drug.

From 2021, 10 areas will acquire a legal supply of top quality cannabis from regulated producers for their cafes, in a bid to reduce black market activity.

Indicating the contentious issue is still not settled, the four largest cities, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht, are excluded from the trial.

Officials decided it would be too dangerous and onerous to organize if the major cities overnight decided to cut off their existing suppliers. Arnhem, Almere, Breda, Groningen, Heerlen, Hellevoetsluis, Maastricht, Nijmegen, Tilburg and Zaanstad are the towns where a trial will be held.

The Netherland’s liberal drug laws have long split opinion, and cultivations remains a touchy subject as home-growing is outlawed in a country associated with recreational public smoking of the drug.

Amsterdam is a major tourist destination for cannabis enthusiasts but the country has turned a blind eye to the way cafes acquire their stock. Illicit growers supply the market while authorities ignore the transaction.

However, concerns over black market creep and the closure of hundreds of cafes over the last decade has forced the government to pursue a fully regulated market in order to not lose the tens of millions of euros generated annually from cannabis tourism.

Cities were reluctant to become involved in the government trial initially, with concerns any legitimate supply would be more expensive and turn away customers.

The trial will run at 79 coffee shops, which will report back the success of being supplied by legal growers between 2021 and 2025. Should the trial result in a positive change, the Dutch government will attempt to extend it nationwide and roll out a fully legal supply of marijuana for every cafe in the country.

In announcing the decision, Justice Minister Ferdinand Grapperhaus and health minister Bruno Bruins said consumer protection was the main priority. The pair believe the plan could end the “illogical and inconsistent” policy that puts cafes in hock to illegal suppliers.

Licensed growers have costly export contracts and there is currently no indication of prices they will offer the cafes, who have already warned that if the cost of buying is not maintained, cannabis users will simply go directly to the black market.

All is not well in vapeland. Over the weekend, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) released a health alert with the headline: "Severe Pulmonary Disease Associated with Using E-Cigarette Products."  

The warning came on the heels of reports that at least 215 people in 25 states have reported lung-related illnesses associated with e-cigarettes or vapes. The first known death was in Illinois, where a patient who reported using E-cigarettes was hospitalized with severe respiratory illness and later died. That state alone has seen the number of cases of people reporting respiratory problems from e-cigarettes or vapes double in the past week. 

On Sunday, The New York Times released a bombshell story that quoted Dr. Melodi Pirzada, chief pediatric pulmonologist at NYU Winthrop Hospital in Mineola, N.Y., as calling the situation "an epidemic." The article went on to say: "Patients, mostly otherwise healthy and in their late teens and 20s, are showing up with severe shortness of breath, often after suffering for several days with vomiting, fever and fatigue. Some have wound up in the intensive care unit or on a ventilator for weeks." 

Not Just a Nicotine Problem

While research remains to be done, some reputable organizations consider vaping to be a safe alternative to tobacco. The Government agency Public Health England has said that vaping is safer than smoking and could lead to the demise of the traditional cigarette. 

However, the CDC warns that E-cigarettes can contain harmful substances, such as nicotine, heavy metals (like lead), volatile organic compounds, and cancer-causing chemicals. They go on to say that some products causing these illnesses may have been acquired from unknown or unauthorized (i.e., “street”) sources; and can be modified, increasing their potential for harm to the user.

But this isn't just a problem for tobacco smokers. According to the CDC, "many patients have reported using e-cigarettes containing cannabinoid products such as THC or CBD."

What Should You Do

While acknowledging that the recent vaping illnesses are part of an ongoing investigation, the CDC offers several recommendations to a public on edge:

Don't buy vapes from an unreputable source

Anyone who uses e-cigarette products should not buy these products off the street (e.g., e-cigarette products with THC, other cannabinoids) and should not modify e-cigarette products or add any substances to these products that are not intended by the manufacturer.

Monitor your symptoms

Regardless of the ongoing investigation, e-cigarette products should not be used by youth, young adults, pregnant women, as well as adults who do not currently use tobacco products. If you use e-cigarette products, monitor yourself for symptoms (e.g., cough, shortness of breath, chest pain) and promptly seek medical attention if you have concerns about your health. CDC and FDA will continue to advise and alert the public as more information becomes available.

Write down this information

If you are concerned about harmful effects from e-cigarette products, call your local poison control center at: 1-800-222-1222. The CDC also encourages the public to submit detailed reports of any unexpected tobacco or e-cigarette-related health or product issues to the FDA via the online Safety Reporting Portal: https://www.safetyreporting.hhs.govexternal icon.

Vaping is generally considered one of the safest forms of consuming cannabis. According to a study by Public Health England 

When the U.S. Farm Bill passed last year and made hemp legal it marked a sea change in perceptions on the plant and was a major step for the cannabis industry to capitalize on the meteoric rising popularity of CBD. But the new law also created some unforeseen legal challenges, particularly with police struggling to tell the difference between marijuana and legal hemp.

Each individual state is entitled to come up with their own hemp and CBD laws, and Texas, which notoriously has some of the strictest cannabis laws in the country, legalized hemp in June. However, because law enforcement in the Lone Star state isn’t equipped with the ability to test the difference between pot and hemp it essentially, by accident, decriminalized cannabis altogether.

The key factor in separating the two species — hemp and marijuana — is the level of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) levels must be below 0.3 per cent for a plant to be classified as hemp. The two plants look and even smell the same, but Texas police do not have the testing equipment to test for THC to verify the difference.

Because of the dilemma, district attorneys across the state haven’t prosecuted minor level marijuana crimes in the last two months. But the Texas Forensics Science Commission is working with federal authorities to come up with a new way to test for THC that could be available to prosecutors by early next year.

The commission, along with the federal Drug Enforcement Agency, is looking at how to best test for THC concentrations, and they came up with a 1 per cent level to identify the difference between legal hemp and marijuana. It determined using the sharp cutoff of 0.3 per cent could pose problems, as Texas allows medical programs where patients can possess CBD oil with up to 0.5 per cent THC concentration.

Considering how most marijuana today has a concentration of 10 per cent THC or higher, the 1 per cent cut the Texas government believes is a suitable cutoff. State authorities will determine if this new method of testing will work before issuing new guidance to crime labs throughout Texas.

Private companies also offer THC testing services

If Texas is not able to get its testing method for legal hemp and marijuana approved by 2020, there are private companies the state could utilize for testing.

Austin-based Ionization Labs has a machine called CannID, which can offer a precise breakdown — even identifying a concentration of THC that’s below 0.3 per cent.

“CannID not only allows us to process materials, oils and flowers, but it allows us to report very accurately the breakdown of all cannabinoids in percentages,” said Chase McMichael, chief science officer at Ionization Labs.

The company has contracts already with businesses in Kentucky, Oregon and several other states to test hemp crops and hemp derived products. It said it already offered to conduct tests for the Texas crime labs, or lease them the equipment.

But the state is aiming to have its own in-house cutting-edge technology, which could be more cost effective strategy.

Given the number of potential hemp and marijuana users in not only Texas but across the country, the need for a reliable and affordable roadside test is still needed anywhere hemp is legal. Otherwise, consumers of legal hemp could still be at risk of being arrested until confirmation can be made of whether the substance they’ve been carrying or using has in fact been hemp or marijuana.

Unless marijuana is legalized in the U.S. federally, which may not happen for years or at all, these issues will likely continue coming up.

At a news conference on Tuesday, law enforcement officials from Illinois’ Cook County announced that they would be collaborating with Code For America to initiate expungement proceedings for possession charges of up to 30 grams of cannabis.

Here’s a quote from the announcement courtesy Cook County State Attorney Kim Foxx, which we hope is heard ‘round the world:

“It is prosecutors who were part of the war on drugs, we were part of a larger ecosystem that believed that in the interest of public safety, that these were convictions that were necessary to gain. In the benefit of hindsight and looking at the impact of the war on drugs, it is also prosecutors who have to be at the table to ensure that we are righting the wrongs of the past.”

Illinois legalized recreational marijuana two months ago, making it the first state in the US to regulate adult-use cannabis via the legislative process rather than voter referendum. The law will take effect on January 1, and officials are working to make sure that the legal system is in order for that date.

When he signed the bill into effect, Governor J.B. Pritzker said it would automatically expunge and pardon the records of 800,000 state residents. That part was particularly important as police in Illinois and particularly Chicago (which is located in Cook County) have come under fire for their demonstrably racist cannabis policing tactics.

Low level cannabis convictions can prevent individuals from landing employment and qualifying for public housing.

Code For America has also played a role in expediting cannabis expungements in San Francisco, whose DA announced that it would collaborate with the organization in the identification of over 9,000 cases. The group has developed a program that can gather cases relating to cannabis charges that are no longer crimes under recent legalization laws.

The program is a big help to county governments that have struggled over the task of sifting through criminal records. Notably, though, the Code For America program is of little use when it comes to charges that took place before digitization. As the Chicago Tribune notes, in the 1960s, a person found with a single joint on their person could get a felony and mandatory prison sentence. (In the ‘70s, that was reduced to misdemeanor charge, a year in jail, and a $1,000 fine.)

Months after the beginning of the San Francisco project, California’s Los Angeles and San Joaquin counties decided to follow suit with Code For America, saying the collaboration had the potential to reduce or clear more than 54,000 cannabis convictions. To date, 14 California counties have started working with Code For America’s Clear My Record project, which offers online resources for people who wish to get cannabis-related offenses out of their lives.

In Cook County, expungements won’t require any work on the part of the affected individuals, who will get a letter saying their charges have been expunged.

The first challenge will be getting the conviction data into the correct format to be dealt with by the program. After that, “Literally, you will be clearing out hundreds and hundreds of records per minute,” says Foxx.

Mind you, even “automatic” expungements are, sadly, not a quick fix. County officials say Code For America’s work should be done by 2021.