If you check Reddit, you’ll find threads of messages filled with people planning on attending music festivals and asking for help on their “festival drug schedule” — that is what order and in what combination to do your drugs. A typical response involves some combination of substances on different days.

Drug experts agree that polysubstance use, like that described above, is common in the festival scene and beyond. Sometimes called “cocktailing,” polysubstance use is broadly defined as the consumption of more than one substance by the same person, often at the same time or sequentially. There are dangerous implications to polysubstance use which is why it’s important to know why young people are engaging this behavior.

“It’s quite unusual [in general] for people to only use one substance,” says Mitchell Gomez, executive director of Dance Safe, a peer-based organization that promotes health and safety within the nightlife and electronic music community. Stefanie Jones, who runs music festival outreach for the Drug Policy Alliance, echoes the sentiment: “Polysubstance use is the norm.” This is especially true in the music scene, Gomez says, where the concert form has shifted from a one-night rave to a multi-day camping festival. “The idea that someone would go to a four-day festival and only do one drug,” he says, “is ludicrous. And even throughout a single night I think it’s extremely common for people to combine substances.”

Local residents will soon be able to visit medical marijuana stores in the Miami Valley.

The Dayton-Springfield-Cincinnati region will get 12 medical marijuana stores, the Ohio Board of Pharmacy ruled on Monday. Locally, the stores will open in Montgomery, Greene, Butler, Warren, Clark and Hamilton counties. The Board of Pharmacy announced the winners of up to 56 dispensary licenses out of 376 applications statewide.

Here’s what we else we know:

1. What local counties didn’t win out?

The licenses are distributed across 28 geographic districts. Three districts, including one that covers Miami County, did not have viable or any applications.

2. When will the stores open? 

The licensees are expected to open storefront operations later this year when Ohio’s new medical marijuana industry launches. In Montgomery County, three stores will open: Pure Ohio Wellness LLC, CannAscend Alternative and Schottenstein Aphria III LLC. In Greene County, Harvest of Ohio LLC will open in Beavercreek. Check out the rest of the stores and where they will be located.

3. How were the stores chosen?

State pharmacy officials and North Highland, a consultant, spent six months reviewing and scoring applications based on business, operations and patient care plans as well as compliance with existing laws.

Read the rest of the article here.

Recreational marijuana sales, hemp farms and a way to erase past drug convictions could be coming soon to Ohio.

That’s if all goes according to Ian James’ plans.

The man behind Ohio’s 2015 failed marijuana legalization measure has big plans for cannabis policy in Ohio. James is a controversial figure in Ohio politics and among marijuana activists. But the ResponsibleOhioinitiative he backed was the only one out of a dozen legalization proposals made over the years to appear on a statewide ballot.

James, speaking with reporters Tuesday, said he plans this year to push legislation to legalize hemp production in Ohio, back a new “free market” recreational marijuana constitutional amendment and reintroduce the “Fresh Start Act” to allow Ohioans to expunge convictions for crimes that are no longer criminal offenses.

Read the rest of the article here.

Breast-feeding has known benefits for both baby and mom, but if a new mom also smokes marijuana, does the drug turn up in her breast milk?

Yes, says new research. But the exact consequences of the small amount of marijuana that makes it to a baby aren’t yet clear.

“This study is just a start to see if marijuana transferred into breast milk. Levels in milk were quite low,” said senior study author Thomas Hale, director of the Infant Risk Center at Texas Tech University School of Medicine in Amarillo.

The researchers also don’t know if the levels of pot in breast milk would rise if a woman smokes more.

Still, study co-author Dr. Teresa Baker, co-director of the Infant Risk Center at Texas Tech, said, “We do not recommend the use of marijuana. There’s concern for the developing brain exposed to THC [the active component in marijuana].”

Both Hale and Baker said that women should abstain from smoking marijuana while breast-feeding because there’s simply no known safe amount.

The study included eight women who used pot. The women lived in Denver, where recreational marijuana is legal. Their use of marijuana varied, with most using the drug infrequently, although one woman said she’d used it seven to 10 times during the past week.

The women were between two and five months after delivery, and all were exclusively breast-feeding their babies.

The study was done completely anonymously. The researchers never knew who the women were.

For rest of the article, click here.

Experts describe how rat poison linked to a recent bleeding outbreak does its damage

Three people died and more than 100 have been sickened in the past few weeks after taking synthetic cannabinoids, human-made compounds that target the same brain receptors as marijuana. Symptoms documented by poison centers—first mostly in the Midwest, and now in Maryland—include unexplained bruising, coughing up blood, bleeding from the nose and gums, blood in urine and feces, and excessively heavy menstruation.

An ongoing investigation has identified a likely culprit in the blood of those affected: rat poison, specifically brodifacoum. Commonly sold in hardware stores, it is a dangerous anticoagulant that can also cause brain damage.

These are the first known instances of rat poison being found in synthetic cannabinoids—and how the toxin got there is unknown. Douglas Feinstein, a neuroscientist and brodifacoum expert developing new antidotes to this substance at the University of Illinois at Chicago, says the symptoms in these cases indicate high levels of exposure. That makes accidental contamination unlikely, he says, and suggests the poison may have been introduced deliberately. “We don’t know the exact doses these people are getting, but it’s a lot,” says Feinstein, who is hoping to analyze blood samples from those affected.* “It could have been added intentionally to prolong the high.”

Read more here.