Ohio Officials Post New Rules For Marijuana Packaging And Labeling Requirements As Market Expands
Ohio regulators have filed new proposed rules to build upon the state’s marijuana legalization law, laying out plans to update regulations on labeling and packaging requirements.
In a rule package that’s now open for public comment, the Department of Cannabis Control (DCC) put forward six proposals under the state’s Common Sense Initiative (CSI), which is meant to “eliminate excessive and duplicative rules and regulations that stand in the way of job creation.”
One of the proposed rules would require cannabis packaging to display a “universal THC symbol” that would aim to ensure consumer and law enforcement awareness that the product contains licensed and regulated THC.
Another rule would prescribe limitations on the amount of marijuana that could be sold within a given container. DCC also proposed setting requirements to ensure that certain packaging and labeling standards are met, including child-resistant materials for cannabis, before they are distributed for commercial sales.
An additional rule would prevent “using a package that is attractive to children, false or misleading, obscene, a health-related statement, or encourages over consumption or intoxication, among other prohibitions.”
“The rule also specifically prohibits cannabis products that reference or resemble cartoon characters, fictional characters, or pop culture icons whose target
‘Greedy And Corrupt’: Calif. Politicians Forced To Personally Pay Company $1.6M
Fighting the government and winning can seem like a pipe dream for anyone who feels that they’ve been wronged by bureaucracy. But hard-fought legal victories do happen sometimes — and for one California cannabis company, it recently resulted in a seven-figure payout.
David Ju, the owner of a Los Angeles area cannabis company, won a nearly $1.9 million verdict earlier this month against the city of Baldwin Park and multiple public officials after a jury agreed the local politicians had committed fraud during the city’s cannabis licensing process. Shockingly, both the individual politicians and the city are now responsible for paying Ju the damages.
Oren Bitan, an LA attorney who was not involved in the case but reviewed its details, said in an email to SFGATE that winning a case like this was “extremely difficult” and “historically rare.” Usually, Bitan said, the legal system protects public officials from being personally liable for actions they take while in government office.
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New Research Finds Psychedelics Could Protect the Brain from Neurodegenerative Disease
Scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) have produced promising new findings that psychedelics form part of therapy for neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. In their study in Nature Neuroscience, psychedelic substances are discovered to enhance development in the brain and protect against poisonous proteins that cause loss of mental capacity. […]
Americans View Using Marijuana As Less Risky During Pregnancy Than Alcohol Or Cigarettes, Poll Finds
On the list of activities that Americans say is dangerous for pregnant women to engage in, using marijuana falls below drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes, according to a new poll.
The YouGov survey comes amid heightened attention to pregnancy-related risks after the Trump administration made a controversial assessment that linked acetaminophen, commonly known by the brand name Tylenol, to increased chances of autism for children.
With respect to other substances, however, 66 percent of respondents said that using marijuana while pregnant poses a “high” health risk. Another 20 percent said there’s a “moderate risk” and 8 percent there’s either a “low” risk or no risk at all.
By contrast, a total of 94 percent of Americans agree that smoking cigarettes is dangerous during pregnancy, including 84 percent who said there was a high risk.
For alcohol, 96 percent said there’s either a high or moderate risk of drinking while pregnant.
New polling on pregnancy risks % of U.S. adult citizens who think the following generally pose a high risk during pregnancy Cigarettes 84% Alcohol 81% Smoking marijuana 66% Exposure to pesticides 62% High stress 56% Eating raw fish 39% Taking acetaminophen 18% (Link in reply) pic.twitter.com/8T9soY4sz2
The YouGov survey involved interviews with 2,267 U.S. adults, based on two separate 2025 polls from September 22-26 and September 23-25. The margin of error was +/-3 percentage points.
The issue of cannabis use and pregnancy has been routinely debated and studied. Many experts say that marijuana shouldn’t be consumed by pregnant women, though some advocates argue that its relative harms could be outweighed in some cases by benefits in the treatment of major health conditions.
In any case, advocates have pushed back against narratives that legalization adds to the risk of marijuana use during pregnancy, contending that creating regulatory models for cannabis is also a way to promote education that could inform vulnerable populations about potential risks of use.
In Oklahoma, local news in 2022 began reporting that prosecutors there were targeting pregnant women for using medical marijuana, resulting in felony child neglect charges being filed against 26 mothers. The crime can carry up to a life prison in Oklahoma.
New Michigan Wholesale Cannabis Tax Would ‘Decimate’ Businesses, Industry Says
Michigan marijuana industry experts are warning of dire consequences for the market if a 24% wholesale tax is signed into law, arguing it could “decimate” businesses currently struggling with oversaturation and declining price points.
The tax, approved 78-21 by the Republican-led Michigan House Thursday, would kick Michigan’s marijuana tax rate out from among the states with the lowest marijuana tax rates and push it up the ladder of states levying pot for big cash. Roughly 39,000 people are employed in the marijuana industry in Michigan, according to state records.
The tax hike is a key piece of a long-sought road funding deal and critical to a budget agreement being negotiated to avoid a government shutdown Wednesday. The wholesale tax on marijuana, a gas tax revenue swap and spending cuts to some state departments are expected to generate between $1.5 billion and $1.8 billion in additional road funding annually.
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Study Finds Psilocybin May Extend Lifespan and Slow Aging
A groundbreaking study from Emory University has demonstrated that the active compound of magic mushrooms, psilocybin, may possess anti-aging effects on the cellular as well as organism level. The study, in partnership with Baylor College of Medicine, found that the active metabolite of psilocybin, psilocin, prolonged the lifespan of human cells and aged mice by […]
How California Finally Learned What Every Cannabis Advocate Has Been Screaming about for Years
Now, after years of legal businesses struggling to survive while cartels laugh all the way to the bank, California is finally admitting what we’ve been saying all along: you can’t tax your way to successful legalization if you price yourself out of the market.
8 Best Weed Strains to Celebrate the Summer Solstice
Highs you can ride to the end of the year’s longest day
The Summer Solstice observes the longest day of the year for every place north of the Tropic of Cancer. It’s when the sun takes high noon to its highest heights, as far above the Equator as it will go, and bathes us with the most light of our annual trip around it.
The word solstice, however, roughly translates from Latin as “standing sun.” The longest day of the year is mere seconds longer than the day before it and shorter than the day ahead of it. Because of this, for a week around the Solstice, the sun appears to keep its place in the sky.
When we think of the best summertime cannabis strains, energizing sativas like Durban Poison and Blue Dream immediately come to mind. And if they sound like the perfect vibe, we hyperlinked them for your convenience. But if reflecting on the cycles of our planetary existence stirs your soul in ways typically kept between you and Mother Nature, read on for complex cultivar recommendations that pay proper homage to this yearly sunlight summit.
Cannabis connections to Summer Solstice
The Summer Solstice coincides with two significant Northern Hemisphere cannabis cultivation practices. One is the first of two harvests for greenhouse growers, and the other, for outdoor growers, is when the sensitive plants make their shift from veg and stretch to flower and grow as they detect the days getting shorter.
Weed growers, especially of the outdoor variety, must have rebellious spirits, green thumbs, and the knack of laughing in the face of risk if they want to grow great plants and make a good living. Those traits often accompany extra layers of open-mindedness and curiosity that allow them to question not just authority but the reality that breeds it. So if you give them a chance to howl at the sun while they smoke their choicest buds, they’ll likely take it. Perhaps they’ll even embrace the more mystical ideas behind it. Such as that magic is most potent when the sun stands still and Earth hangs from her feet.
Strains to accent summer’s celestial flex
An appropriate way to honor all the sun’s hard work is to unlearn the idea that “energizing” and “sativa” belong in the same sentence. They can share a sentence, but one descriptor needn’t inspire the other. Cannabis sativa and indica designations are about the regional genetic origins and corresponding growth traits of different plants.
The strains that create typically uplifting reactions in us come from all over the world, from plants with all sorts of shapes and growth patterns, and with more terpene variations than we could ever name. But that doesn’t mean that some aren’t better than others for celebrating the Summer Solstice.
Bananas, berries, and citrus fruits mingle with funk, gas, and pine needles in the following gorgeous strains that could make celebrating Summer Solstice your favorite hoorah of the year.
Nothing screams summer like releasing an open-throated, “Day-O” to the morning light. Pairing this rousing call with the equally stimulating Tally Mon strain is an ideal opening to the day’s extra sip of sunlight. It’s a banana-forward delight bred by Oni Seed Co. in California.
Though reportedly tough to obtain beyond the West Coast markets, if you can find it, Tally Mon is the perfect thing for seeking that spot where the sand isn’t hot and shifty but also isn’t in a wave-maybe zone. Unfurl your towel, pin it down with buds and yummy foods, and enjoy the deep dawn stretch feeling of Tally Mon’s balanced, body-soothing high.
A longtime fan favorite and award-hogging strain, Super Lemon Haze is an energetic combination of bright, sunny lemons and the soft earth that nurtures their trees. It has unmistakable citrus, pine, and forest floor aroma and exhale notes, but the first draw you take is all lemon—no sour, no sweet, just the bright yellow sensation of the vibrant fruit’s soul.
Take a deep inhale of Super Lemon Haze during any kind of daytime hike, and you release as much gratitude as anything else with the exhale. Super Lemon Haze is a jazzy, old-school strain with a unique beauty to its sativa-dominant traits. It’s also bound to keep you going while you make your way to whatever peak you’re after with its quick, proactivity-boosting burst.
Colorful and crystally, Super Boof is a summer festival deity. Its buds are dressed in royal purple and are laced with velvety greens that are trimmed with spindling bright orange hairs that pop and shout when you bust open its buds, but shyly hide behind a thick crystal coating while waiting patiently in their jars.
Super Boof brings the funk to the festival, whether it’s for music, weed, aerospace engineering, or purely spiritual purposes, its gassy fumes hover underneath Luxardo cherry and tart lemonade notes. It’s a strain that will smudge out any off-feeling vibes and clear space in your mind to take in the Solstice-inspired celebration that drew you into its doors.
With an alias like MTN Trop, the Tropicanna Cookies strain by Oni Seed Co. makes sense for wading ankle deep through the cold, clear rushes of your nearest creek. But we can’t go by curious coincidences alone, even if one of Tropicanna Cookies’ parent cultivars also happens to be Girl Scout Cookies.
Tropicanna Cookies weed tastes like fizzy orange sweet-tart candies, but with a little extra sugar and notes of thick forest brush. Its high is just right for feeling the water pass over, beside, and underneath your feet, creek pebbles, fallen branches, and silt. Close your eyes and inhale the woods around you slowly as you let yourself feel that everything is always new, always renewed, and, like us and everything else, the sun plays an integral part that started at the start of it all.
The Blumosa strain is a newer, indica-leaning hybrid strain that’s become beloved, fast. It has the sweet, citrus flavor of an afternoon mocktail that feels at home, knees splayed with a side smile and relaxed slouch on a bench in the heart of a metropolis park, post-workout and pre-sunset.
The Blueberry Girl Scout Cookies and Mimosa cross from SOG ARMY is a fantastic anytime-of-day strain that shines a light on the wisdom of your intuition and easily gives way to letting go. Like the cannabis plants peppering the hills, you’ll sense an inner shift to switch your growth to something that bears potent fruit. It’s perfect, breezy yet deeply gratifying material before joining your buds for the final frays of the day.
The Yellow Zushi strain is another one gaining recent industry traction. It’s a cross of Zkittlez and Kush Mints that makes for a pine and menthol flavor and aroma experience with citrus and funk highlights. It has painted desert vibes all over it, and it’s just the thing for setting up camp and enjoying the fading rays.
The Yellow Zushi plant is meaty and mostly indica. It sports purples and greens dotted with peach-toned hairs and giant, sparkling trichomes. If you can find show buds, their beauty is hypnotic, and the high is euphoric. This is mind-melt grade cannabis, perfect for appreciating the harmonious relationships we enjoy within our solar system and beyond.
Weaving midsummer crowns and setting up sundials: Zkittlez
Zkittlez is the pairing of cult classic strains Grape Ape and Grapefruit. Though it doesn’t typically clock in as high-THC, Zkittlez is the perfect example of the beauty and complexity of the cannabis plant as a whole. Much like the extended length of the longest summer day, this strain uses its space to conjure a deep connection to our emotions and a resounding sense that we are where we should be.
As you weave flower, vine, and plant stems into a midsummer crown or DIY a Summer Solstice sundial with the family, the light yet profound effect of the Zkittlez flowers will add a glittery essence to your playfulness and glee.
The hashy, mouth-watering big bud energy of the Strawberry Banana strain is the sweetest sendoff to the last of the sun’s showy display. As fire pit ash and smoke rings fade up into the deepening dark, Strawberry Banana, Strawnana to some, puts the berry on top of a day we can only praise one axis spin per year.
Strawberry Banana loves to be alive. It pops itself proudly from seed to weed and enters the world dripping in diamonds and jonesing to mingle. It begs to butt into the philosophical musings of strangers and sink softly and deeply into the mossy cushion of a swirling Solstice dance. As you swing from the arms of a friend or bough, let the belly laughs flow, and let go of what didn’t get ready for new growth this year.
If you want to make it to sunset on summer’s longest stretch, weed is a better bet than alcohol. Though if you chain smoke your blunts, reach for another weed drink, or give in to the munchies from your munchies and eat more edibles, you might welcome it with a true midsummer’s dream.
Don’t sweat it, whatever you do. A lovely element of celebrating Summer Solstice with a truly great strain is taking in the miracles that sustain life’s cycles. That calls for an open mellowness that borders on meditation, which is what sets the best nugs from the rest.
No matter the thrill, rush, couchlock, or contemplativeness of a strain of this caliber, it will take you places you didn’t know you needed to go.
What better way to kick off the next stage of your year?
Marijuana Use Is Tied To 'Significantly Higher Sexual Desire And Arousal,' New Study Shows
Marijuana use is associated with increased sexual desire and arousal, as well as lower levels of sexual distress, new research shows.
The report, a doctoral thesis out of Queen’s University in Canada, includes two separate studies: an online survey of 1,547 cannabis users as well as a 28-day diary analysis of 115 individuals, 87 of whom were marijuana users, while 28 were infrequent users or nonusers.
“More frequent cannabis use was linked with greater daily sexual desire,” wrote author Kayla M. Mooney. “On sexual activity days, participants reported significantly higher sexual desire and arousal on days they used cannabis compared to non-use days.”
“Across all study days (regardless of sexual activity), participants reported significantly higher sexual desire and lower sexual distress on days they used cannabis compared to non-use days,” the study continues, noting the findings could help inform both sex therapy and general psychotherapy.
As for the online survey, “Approximately half of the sample reported sexual motivations for cannabis use, most commonly to enhance aspects of the sexual response,” according to the abstract.
The new report — which itself calls the relationship between cannabis and sexual functioning “complicated” — adds to a growing body of research about the subject.
“The outcomes favoured the [combined] group,” that research said “in which sexual function, levels of sexual arousal, lubrication, and orgasm increased, and the levels of sexual pain decreased.”
As for sexual fulfillment, a separate study last year found that while alcohol might be effective to “facilitate” sex, marijuana is better at enhancing sexual sensitivity and satisfaction.
While alcohol increased some elements of sexual attraction — including making people feel more attractive, more extroverted, and more desirous — people who used marijuana “have more sensitivity and they are more sexually satisfied than when they consume alcohol,” the authors wrote.
A broad scientific review of academic research on cannabis and human sexuality published last year concluded that while the relationship between marijuana and sex is a complicated one, use of cannabis is generally associated with more frequent sexual activity as well as increased sexual desire and enjoyment.
That article, published in the journal Psychopharmacology, also suggested that lower doses of marijuana may actually be best suited for sexual satisfaction, while higher doses could in fact lead to decreases in desire and performance. And it suggested effects may differ between men and women.
As for men, the Psychopharmacology article noted that studies’ findings “are conflicting — some suggest that cannabis causes erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation, and postponed ejaculation, while others claim the opposite.”
Yet another study, however, cautions that more marijuana doesn’t necessarily mean better sex. A literature review published in 2019 found that cannabis’s impact on libido may depend on dosage, with lower amounts of THC correlating with the highest levels of arousal and satisfaction. Most studies showed that marijuana has a positive effect on women’s sexual function, the study found, but too much THC can actually backfire.
“On the surface, this type of research may seem ‘quirky,’” one of the authors of that study said, “but the psychological aspects of sexual function — including how we think about our own bodies, our attraction to our partners, and our ability to connect to people intimately — are all important to psychological wellbeing in sexually active adults.”
Written by Ben Adlin for Marijuana Moment | Featured image by Gina Coleman/Weedmaps
