Hemp Eyewear looks to high-end spectacles market

Kirsteen Paterson
Hemp Eyewear, founded in Edinburgh, is installing infrastructure which will allow it to expand its business
Hemp Eyewear, founded in Edinburgh, is installing infrastructure which will allow it to expand its business
 
SCOTS sunglasses firm Hemp Eyewear has its sights on the luxury market as it moves into high-end spectacles for the first time.
The innovative start-up began trading from its Edinburgh base in 2014 after a kickstarter campaign attracted 150 per cent of required funding.
Founded by designer Sam Whitten, the firm takes raw hemp from Germany and subjects it to around 100 processes to create sustainable, super light sunglasses that are stronger than carbon fibre and feature high quality Carl Zeiss lenses. At just 22g, each handcrafted, recyclable and unisex pair is less than half the weight of a standard wayfarer model.
 
Full Article: 
http://www.thenational.scot/business/15158379.Hemp_Eyewear_looks_to_high_end_spectacles_market/#articleContinue
 

Treating Your Allergies With Weed



 
Good news, stuffed-up stoners! As it turns out, cannabis could be the next treatment for your chronic, acute seasonal allergies. It all starts with cannabidiol, more commonly known as CBD.
For some time now, self-medicating folks have been aware that CBD oil works as a powerful treatment for asthma and COPD by suppressing the symptoms that lead to an attack. Now there is a paper in the journal Pulmonary Pharmacology and Therapeutics to back them up: CBD treatments have proven to stop the decrease of airway flow and make breathing easier. Further, when an allergen was introduced into the subjects, CBD oil helped control the production and behavior of mast cells—the white blood cells that freak out when an allergen enters your body and produce histamines, the part of our immune system that provide the classic effects of allergies: sneezing, rashes, itching, coughing, all the fun stuff.
 
Full Article: 
http://www.seattleweekly.com/food/treating-your-allergies-with-weed/

You can smoke pot in this creative writing class

BY LINDSEY BARTLETT
Image result for Westword

An evening at Lit on Lit, aka the stoned poets’ society. Lindsey Bartlett

“Be a crazy, dumb saint of the mind…,” proclaims Daniel Landes, standing in a third-floor attic space in south Denver that feels nice, warm and present.

At first glance, this class may look like your average creative-writing workshop, with pens sprinkled across two tables in the center of the room, alongside desk lamps and composition notebooks. But Lit on Lit is a new kind of creative-writing class, one that puts something different on those tables: a bowl of cannabis and rolling papers to help spark creativity.
This is the first writing class in the country that invites attendees to smoke legal cannabis during the brainstorming session and the prompts.

 
Full Article: 
http://www.westword.com/marijuana/lit-on-lit-creative-writing-class-takes-stoned-poets-out-of-the-shadows-8864933
 

MycoBoard Offers an Innovative, Sustainable Solution for Building Products

Change and innovation in the building industry is a slow process. Change has to take root and then drive through the multiple tiers of players, starting with consumers and making its way through suppliers, manufacturers, designers, and builders.
That’s partly why Eben Bayer, CEO and founder of Ecovative, worked on creating a product that can make a change by fitting into the existing infrastructure. His product, MycoBoard, is “grown” using hemp, mycelium—the vegetative growth stage of fungi— and a little bit of starch and it can be used as particleboard to manufacture products used in the building process.

 
Full Article: 
http://www.hiveforhousing.com/products/material-sciences/mycoboard-offers-an-innovative-sustainable-solution-for-building-products_o

Farmers in Italy fight soil contamination with cannabis

By SETH DOANE
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Farmers in a region of Italy once known for cheeses have turned to cultivating a type of cannabis — not to smoke or sell — but to decontaminate polluted soil.
The hemp they’re growing contains very little THC — the compound that makes people high.
Vincenzo Fornaro showed CBS News an empty farm, once packed with more than 600 sheep.
“For generations, our family produced ricotta and meat,” Fornaro recalled.
It wasn’t until 2008 when Italy’s government discovered the toxic chemical dioxin in his sheep and slaughtered the entire herd.  The culprit was just a mile away.
Contaminants spewing from a massive steel plant — Europe’s largest — meant Fornaro could never have grazing animals again. To clean up his land he decided to try a rather unusual experiment.
Fornaro planted industrial hemp to try to leach contaminants from the soil.
 
Full Article: 
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cannabis-plant-soil-decontamination-italy-vincenzo-fornaro/

Big Alzheimer’s research roadblock: Federal government

Leslie Kramer, special to CNBC.com
Jim Hill looks over the marijuana he grows for medical purposes at his farm in Potter Valley, Calif. Hill believes passionately in marijuana's purported ability to treat the symptoms of diseases ranging from cancer to Alzheimer's.

Eric Risberg | AP – Jim Hill looks over the marijuana he grows for medical purposes at his farm in Potter Valley, Calif. Hill believes passionately in marijuana’s purported ability to treat the symptoms of diseases ranging from cancer to Alzheimer’s.
Promising new research conducted last year at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies has shown that marijuana extracts may hold a key to treating Alzheimer’s disease. The next step: To conduct tests on mice and, if the results are promising, move on to human trials.
But Salk Institute researchers have run into a major hurdle, and not a scientific one: the federal government. The Salk Institute is based in La Jolla, California — a state that legalized marijuana last November — but it is a federally funded research institute.
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Medical expert: Marijuana should be first line option, not last resort

by Tara Petitt
Image result for Medical cannabis
 
The push to legalize medical marijuana is intensifying at the South Carolina State house. Lawmakers heard nearly five hours of testimony Wednesday from medical experts. Currently, 24 states have full comprehensive medical cannabis laws, and several doctors are urging South Carolina lawmakers to do the same.
“Cannabis is not for everybody, but I do believe it should be a first line option and not the last resort,” said Dr. Uma Dhanabalan. She practices medicine in Massachusetts and says there’s years of science to prove benefits of cannabis.
 
Full Article: 
http://wach.com/news/local/medical-expert-marijuana-should-be-first-line-option-not-last-resort

Philippines: One day after death penalty vote, House endorses medical marijuana

By
Image result for thc weed
 
JUST a day after the Philippine House of Representatives approved the move to reinstate the death penalty for drug-related offences, the House committee on health endorsed the use of marijuana for medical reasons.
House Bill 180, according to ABS-CBN News, prescribes the rules for the proper use of medical marijuana, including the designation of a qualified medical cannabis physician, a medical cannabis patient who shall be issued an identification card, a qualified medical cannabis caregiver and a qualified medical cannabis compassionate centre.
Rep. Seth Jalosjos sponsored the Bill on behalf of its author, Isabela Rep. Rodito Albano, who was unable to attend the hearing.
Jalosjos believes that legalising marijuana for medical use “will benefit thousands of patients suffering from serious and debilitating diseases.”
 
Full Article: 
https://asiancorrespondent.com/2017/03/philippines-one-day-death-penalty-vote-house-endorses-medical-marijuana/#krPlglgodB77jllK.97

Scientists say the government’s only pot farm has moldy samples — and no federal testing standards

BY CALEB HELLERMAN
A researcher in Dr. Sue Sisley's lab pours out a sample of marijuana it received from the federal facility responsible for growing marijuana for clinical research. When she received marijuana for a PTSD trial last year, Sisley says the packages contained mold and lead, and weren't as potent as she requested. Photo by Rebecca Matthews.

A researcher in Dr. Sue Sisley’s lab pours out a sample of marijuana produced by the federal facility responsible for growing cannabis for clinical research. When she received marijuana for a PTSD trial last year, Sisley says the packages contained mold and weren’t as potent as she requested. Photo courtesy of MAPS.

Sue Sisley, a primary care physician in Scottsdale, Arizona, recalls the moment she picked up the carefully wrapped package fresh from the delivery truck. Nearly two years after Sisley and her colleagues were awarded a grant to study marijuana as a treatment for 76 military veterans suffering from chronic post-traumatic stress disorder, her shipment of the drug was finally in hand.
But minutes later, as she opened the packets to weigh the drug – as required by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration – her enthusiasm turned to dismay. It didn’t look like marijuana. Most of it looked like green talcum powder.
“It didn’t resemble cannabis. It didn’t smell like cannabis,” Sisley says. What’s more, laboratory testing found that some of the samples were contaminated with mold, while others didn’t match the chemical potency Sisley had requested for the study.
There’s only one source of marijuana for clinical research in the United States. And “they weren’t able to produce what we were asking for,” Sisley says.
 
Full Article: 
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/scientists-say-governments-pot-farm-moldy-samples-no-guidelines/

Zeoform A New Plastic That Turns Hemp Into Almost Anything

zeoform-hemp-plastic-2-11-19
 
What if plastic could be made without using fossil fuels and toxic chemicals?

An Australian company has done just that, with a new type of plastic that can turn hemp fiber into pretty much anything.

Zeoform is a promising eco-friendly solution to traditional plastics. It’s made from a simple mixture of plant fiber (specifically cellulose) and water.
What’s more, unlike plastic, Zeoform is compostable.
Hemp, along with flax and straw, are ideal for making Zeoform because of their high cellulose content. But it can be made from recycled paper and textiles too.
 
Full Article: 
http://spasique.com/zeoform-a-new-plastic-that-turns-hemp-into-almost-anything/