- 501(c)3 Non-profit dedicated to research of effects of consuming marijuana among high performing users, those whose performance observably and measurably improves with it, to demonstrate it can be consumed safely and responsibly.
- Mission: To debunk myths that marijuana is impairing, that it negatively impacts coordination, balance, and performance, and that it leads to a lack of motivation. To show that used properly and responsibly it can just make us enjoy our lives more.
- Vision: World where marijuana is again treated as any other medicinal plant, free of stigma, and devoid of racial prejudice.
- Goals: Proving it is completely safe to remove marijuana from Schedule 1, and to treat marijuana prescription as any other medicine prescription for DoT purposes, and to remove marijuana from DoT drug test. To properly and adequately test and research how it affects driving performance. With time to broaden this research to include certain other popular street drugs with medicinal potential, like MDMA, peyote and psilocybe mushrooms.
- Motto: Marijuana should fly off Schedule 1, like statues of general Lee flew off their pedestals.
- Founders remark: "Marijuana helps me accept limitations old age imposes on my body."
- Founders story in Cannabis Now
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FACTOID:
- Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders introduced the law to remove cannabis from Schedule 1 back in 2015.
- President Biden on December 2 signed bipartisan Medical Marijuana and Cannabidiol Research Expansion Act to facilitate research on marijuana and its potential health benefits: we smoke it for 6000 years yet our science knows less about it than about 50 years old Prozac. Also, on October 6, 2022, President Biden announced that he was directing his agencies to re-evaluate marijuana's scheduling.
- According to recent polling by the Pew Research Center, 68% of Americans now support legalizing cannabis for adult-use, and nearly 9 in 10 support legalizing medical cannabis.
- Marijuana was used medicinally for centuries, yet criminalized and stigmatized in the first half of the 20th century primarily due to the American white racism.
- In just the last year three more states legalized adult recreational use of cannabis - Delaware, Minnesota, and Ohio - bringing the total to 24 states and 52% of the US population living where cannabis is legal. Feds are way out of step with times.
- Today 37 states (3/4 of the union) recognize its medical benefits: federal prohibition violates states rights, said Vermont Senator Peter Welch back in 2018
- In January 2020, just a month before Covid breakout, two last screws were screwed into the coffin of the American trucking industry: FMCSA simultaneously introduced Clearinghouse, a federal database of drug tests, to prevent job hopping by drivers, and increased the annual random drug testing rate from 25% to 50% of employees. In 2022 alone, 40,916 truckers tested positive for inactive THC metabolites, which can stay in a person's system for weeks or months after use and do not reflect active impairment. The number increased by 32 percent compared to 2021. Data from DOT's Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) shows that, since 2020, more than 100,000 truckers tested positive for cannabis. Many simply never return to duty.
Only a quarter of the 119,113 drivers with at least one drug violation since January 2020 have completed the process to return to the road. Of the nearly 90,000 drivers now prohibited from driving, more than 67,000 have not started the return-to-duty process. According to Chris Harvey, Wells Fargo's head of equity strategy, drug screenings paired with the nature of the job, which often requires truckers to spend weeks-on-end away from home constantly surveilled by electronics, has led many truck drivers to leave the industry. Harvey said the issue will "continue to push that price even higher," worsening a surge in transportation costs that have left consumers facing price hikes and shortages. Not the pandemic, but our failed drug policy brought us the trucker shortage, supply chain problems and inflation.
- DoT drug testing for marijuana is meaningless since it does not prove impairment, and limits employers rights to chose employees based on performance instead of a drug screen. Yet it costs taxpayers billions of dollars a year. Goverment spends more on testing our piss than on finding the cure for cancer.
- It is a myth perpetuated by inertia that marijuana impairs driving. On the contrary, one study showed a nearly 9 percent decrease in traffic fatalities in states that legalized recreational weed, and another showed that, when they are high, people tend to drive slower, are less prone to tailgate, less likely to road rage, and have less urge to pass, which actually makes them safer drivers. In 2017 the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has advised the U.S. Congress that there is a "poor correlation of THC concentrations in the blood with impairment" from which the NHTSA concluded that "setting per se levels is not meaningful"
- A selective and critical review of the literature in 2022 shows that most experimental studies have failed to elicit statistically-significant cannabis-induced impairments for many of their possible outcomes. And many studies failed to demonstrate any impairment at all in regular users of cannabis (because of the development of tolerance). We argue that selective reporting by researchers, editors and the media has created the false impression that the evidence for cannabis-induced impairment is strong and consistent.
- In Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act Congress finds that. while legal cannabis sales totaled $20,000,000,000 in 2020, only approximately 4 percent of cannabis business owners were black, yet we still, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), spent $3,600,000,000 enforcing cannabis prohibition laws and arrested 600,000 people, among them 4 times more people of color than their white counterparts.
- In 2006 European pharmaceutical giant Sanofi-Aventis invented Rimonabant, the appetite surpressant that blocks CB1 receptor and deactivates endocanabinoid system, hypothesizing that if cannabis causes munchies, blocking its receptors will lead to anti-munchies. It did. People lost weight. But the drug also lead to depression and suicides among those who took it, and Sanofi-Aventis took it off the shelves in 2008.
- CDL Drivers! Please participate in the ongoing, 5 minute long, voluntary, anonymous, online survey, titled Understanding Driving Attitudes and Behaviors Among CMV Drivers, and conducted by the University of Massachusetts Traffic Safety Research Program to examine the experiences and beliefs of professional drivers who operate large/heavy trucks. It focuses on cannabis.
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