Jonathan Blumberg

 
On Wednesday’s episode of “Jay Leno’s Garage,” retired Dell executive Bruce Dietzen sells the host on his unconventional 2017 Renew, a car that was designed with the environment in mind. It was “carbon neutral” to produce and made from woven cannabis hemp.
Manufacturing the average car emits about ten tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. “That’s before it even hits the road,” notes Leno, where it will release another six tons a year.
 
Full Article: 
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/19/jay-leno-drives-a-cannabis-car.html

BEN ADLIN

 
In what appears to be a first-of-its-kind ruling, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on Monday said that employees can’t be fired simply for using medical cannabis. Such terminations, the court said, violate state antidiscrimination rules.
The opinion came as a shock to many, as every other state to consider the issue has decided that employers may indeed fire workers who test positive for cannabis—even if those employees are abiding by state law. In Colorado, for example, the state Supreme Court in 2015 held that a state law barring employers from firing workers for legal, off-duty behavior didn’t apply because cannabis is still illegal under federal law. California, Washington, Montana, and others have issued similar rulings.
 
Full Article: 
https://www.leafly.com/news/politics/cant-fire-cannabis-patients-just-using-cannabis-massachusetts-high-court-rules

Melia Robinson

 
A former Pepsi factory that sat vacant for a decade is being reincarnated as an indoor marijuana grow — one of the largest in the pot-friendly state of Colorado.
Doyen Elements, a holding company that leases real estate properties out to legal cannabis companies, bought an old bottling plant in Pueblo County. Upon completion in 2019, the facility could potentially produce up to 70,000 pounds of marijuana flower a year.
 
Full Article: 
http://www.businessinsider.com/abandoned-pepsi-factory-turned-marijuana-farm-2017-7/#for-many-years-the-104000-square-foot-plant-at-1900-south-freeway-was-used-for-bottling-pepsi-products-but-the-soda-company-like-the-steel-industry-left-pueblo-county-1

By Chloe Fox

 
There’s a new hemp trend sweeping the nation and it has nothing to do with those beaded friendship bracelets from the ‘90s.
Twenty-three states have now enacted pro-industrial hemp legislation (Hawaii Governor Neil Abercrombie signed the latest bill this past week), making the cousin crop to marijuana a national phenomenon. Since the beginning of the year, more than 70 bills related to hemp have been introduced in more than half of the country’s states. Passage of the recent Farm Bill, which legalized the crop for research purposes, further cleared the way for industrial hemp production.
Hemp, which is the same species as marijuana (Cannabis sativa) but contains little to no THC, was grown widely in America before anti-drug sentiment helped make it unpopular in the 1950s. Today, however, the nation’s turning tide on marijuana means its “sober cousin“ is also making a comeback.
Hemp policy is “not just turning a corner,” Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) told The Huffington Post earlier this year. “It’s turning a corner and running downhill.”
 
Full Article: 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/03/hemp-sustainable-crop_n_5243351.html

news@thelocal.ch

 

By: Trey Reckling

 
Although tiny and unassuming, ticks can cause revulsion in people on sight. It’s not just because they are blood suckers and appear uninvited ready to make us their host meal. Ticks have caused untold human suffering throughout history by helping spread plague, fever, paralysis and a variety of other nasty conditions. In 1982 scientists made a connection between Lyme disease and some of the bites of certain ticks. Lyme disease is a priority for the Centers for Disease Control because annual cases can exceed 27,000, up almost three-fold since the mid 1990s. Frighteningly, it affects the brain and nervous system. And it all starts by being bitten by one of the smallest insects we can see with the naked eye, the black-legged tick, AKA the deer tick.
 
Full Article: 
https://thefreshtoast.com/cannabis/tick-cannabis-to-the-rescue-for-symptoms-of-lyme-disease/
 

Eleanor Gibson

 
Walls made of hemp and lime, and local stone make up this sand-coloured house on a hill in northern Israel, which Haifa-based studio Tav Group designed for environmentally conscious artists.
 
Full Article: 
https://www.dezeen.com/2017/07/06/ein-hod-tav-group-israel-house-canabis-artists-house/

by Thuy Ong

 
In a dream crossover of sustainability and design, mushrooms have been used to grow everything from dresses to houses and furniture as an ecological alternative to synthetic materials. “The overall goal of this lamp is to challenge our ideas of what interior products should be made from, how they’re made and ultimately where they will end up,” says its Brooklyn-based designer, Danielle Trofe. “We want to disrupt not only the way in which we manufacture goods, but how as a consumer, you can be empowered to be a part of the growing process creating a greater understanding and connection to your objects.”
 
Full Article: 
https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/11/15951590/mushroom-hemp-lamp-price-ecovative
 

By Polly Washburn, The Cannabist Staff

 
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has released its 2017 World Drug Report, covering 2015 statistics from around the world. The report finds that cannabis is the most consumed, most widely cultivated and most confiscated drug the office tracks.
Despite leading in all of these categories, UNODC reported zero fatal marijuana overdoses in 2015, unchanged from 2014.
 
Full Article: 
http://www.thecannabist.co/2017/06/28/united-nations-drug-office-cannabis-consumption/82564/