It is early morning, just after breakfast, and six-year-old Cayley is wide awake, eagerly anticipating her daily dose of cannabis.
The black Labrador, tail wagging, laps up the liquid tincture owner Brett Hartmann squirts into her mouth, a remedy he uses morning and evening to help alleviate Cayley’s anxiety.
“Ever since I started her on CBD [cannabidiol — a marijuana extract], her separation anxiety has disappeared,” 30-year-old Hartmann said of his pet, a service dog he acquired while in college because he had epilepsy.
Photo: AFP
Hartmann, who lives near Los Angeles, said he turned to medical marijuana for Cayley after he no longer needed her to accompany him everywhere, having himself overcome his epilepsy with the help of the drug.
“I just allowed her to retire and ... I don’t think she handled the transition too well,” said Hartmann, who also has his aging dachshund on cannabis. “But CBD has really helped.”
With the multibillion-dollar medical and recreational marijuana industry for humans blossoming in the US, so is a new customer base — animals.
“We are seeing about 20 percent growth every single month,” said Alison Ettel, founder of Treat Well, a company in California that specializes in non-psychoactive medical cannabis products for animals and humans.
She said owners of animals — from dogs, cats, lizards, turtles, alpacas and horses to farm animals — are increasingly turning to cannabis to help treat ailments ranging from cancer and heart murmurs to arthritis and ear infections.
The feedback is more than encouraging, Ettel said.
“We probably get at least one to five cancer patients a day and the results we’re seeing are just blowing my mind,” she said, claiming the drug can help improve life expectancy.
When she started in the business about a decade ago, Ettel said she would treat about 20 animals per year, mostly dogs.
Today, with medical marijuana legalized in 29 states — plus the District of Columbia — the number of four-legged patients has skyrocketed.
“Now we are treating thousands of animals,” she said.
However, despite the rush to cash in on the booming industry, cannabis remains illegal on the federal level and marijuana laws on the state level do not apply to pets.
That has translated into pet owners having to get a marijuana card for themselves in order to purchase cannabis for their pups, as veterinarians are barred from prescribing marijuana.
The legal gray area and the lack of substantial studies on the effect of cannabis for pets also means that owners and dispensaries have had to tread carefully on dosages.
“We start very, very low and very, very slow to try and find the appropriate dose,” said Melinda Hayes, founder of Sweet Leaf Shoppe, a medical cannabis delivery service. “The last thing you want to do is for your dog or pet to be uncomfortable.”
Proponents have said the advantage of cannabis for ailing pets as opposed to painkillers or other traditional drugs is that when properly used, it has no known serious side effects.
“Other medicines can take a toll on an animal’s kidney, liver and other organs,” Hayes said.
Another advantage was the lower cost of medical cannabis compared to some medication, she added.
However, veterinarians are cautioning against viewing cannabis as a miracle drug.
“There are no studies on dogs or cats, much less guinea pigs or other species, so I don’t know what the potential benefits could be, if any,” California Veterinary Medical Association head Ken Pawlowski said.
While a pet might feel better after ingesting medical marijuana, he warned that did not mean its illness was gone.
“Is the underlying disease actually being treated or is it getting worse?” Pawlowski said. “The dog can feel better because it’s high, and actual known therapy that could help could be overlooked.”
However, pet owners like Hartmann are undeterred, while acknowledging that people need to be better educated on how to use the drug.
“We have so many success stories,” said Hartmann, who works as a cannabis consultant. “For the longest time I was anti-cannabis and was not a proponent of it until I started using it for my epilepsy. It helped me restore my body and it totally makes sense to use it for my dogs.”
“I have people who roll their eyes all the time and I say: ‘You’re just going to have to see it to believe it,’” he added.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
PRESSURE EXPECTED: The appreciation of the NT dollar reflected expectations that Washington would press Taiwan to boost its currency against the US dollar, dealers said Taiwan’s export-oriented semiconductor and auto part manufacturers are expecting their margins to be affected by large foreign exchange losses as the New Taiwan dollar continued to appreciate sharply against the US dollar yesterday. Among major semiconductor manufacturers, ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光), the world’s largest integrated circuit (IC) packaging and testing services provider, said that whenever the NT dollar rises NT$1 against the greenback, its gross margin is cut by about 1.5 percent. The NT dollar traded as strong as NT$29.59 per US dollar before trimming gains to close NT$0.919, or 2.96 percent, higher at NT$30.145 yesterday in Taipei trading
RSS