Alexis Bortell, 12, Won’t Let Court Loss Stop Jeff Sessions Medical Pot Fight

Last year, then-eleven-year-old Colorado resident and medical marijuana patient Alexis Bortell joined other plaintiffs in a lawsuit against pot-hating Attorney General Jeff Sessions over federal scheduling of cannabis. Yesterday, February 26, a judge with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York dismissed the suit, but Bortell, now twelve, wasn’t distressed. Shortly after the news went public, a post appeared on her Facebook page reading, “We were ready. Smile. We know #SCOTUS [Supreme Court of the United States] is where we are probably going.”

Kratom, Marijuana Can Help People Kick Opiates, Addiction Expert Says

After Denver Environmental Health prohibited sales of kratom for human consumption in the wake of a U.S. Food and Drug Administration alert late last year, advocates for the plant-based pain reliever spoke out, with many saying the product had helped them kick addictions to powerful opioids, including heroin. These testimonials are echoed by Roxanne Gullikson, facility director for Portland, Maine’s Greener Pastures Holisticare, a residential treatment center opening next month that will use kratom in combination with marijuana as part of a formal and comprehensive addiction treatment regimen. To her, Denver’s ban is both unjustified and potentially damaging.

Kratom Salmonella Outbreak Warning, One Coloradan Sickened

Shortly after we published a post about Lakewood entrepreneur Faith Day facing down the Food and Drug Administration over a kratom investigation, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in conjunction with the FDA, released a health warning about a “multi-state outbreak of Salmonella infections” related to the popular but controversial herbal pain reliever, with one person from Colorado said to among those affected. And even though Day and the feds have very different views about kratom, some of the concerns voiced by the CDC echo ones she shared with us.