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Even if Sessions is fired, marijuana legalization is a long shot

The marijuana industry is budding before our eyes. In less than three weeks, our neighbor to the north, Canada, will wave the proverbial green flag on recreational cannabis, paving the way for the industry to generate billions of dollars in added annual sales. And globally, around 30 countries have passed broad-based laws permitting the use of medical marijuana.

But within the U.S., we have something of a bifurcated story. On one hand, 30 states have passed legislation allowing physicians to prescribe medical cannabis to patients. Nine of these 30 states also allow adult-use weed to be legally consumed. Yet, marijuana remains a Schedule I substance at the federal level. This means it's entirely illegal, prone to abuse, and has no recognized medical benefits. Since federal law supersedes state law on this matter, it creates something of a murky market for marijuana in the United States.

Could Attorney General Jeff Sessions be fired?
However, this cloudy picture didn't stop pot stocks from steaming to big gains late last week after the feud between President Donald Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions escalated to new levels. In an interview with The Hill, Trump said, "I don't have an attorney general. It's very sad."

Trump and Sessions have been sparring for about a year now, since Sessions recused himself from the investigation into Russia's alleged meddling in the 2016 U.S. elections. But things have worsened in recent weeks, with the president also disagreeing with the way Sessions has handled border policies. In fact, the tension between Trump and Sessions has become so critical that there are rumblings Sessions could be fired from his position.

The reason marijuana investors are so excited about this development is because Sessions has easily been the most vocal opponent of marijuana (both medical and recreational) on Capitol Hill. His departure would be viewed as a decisive win for the legalization movement in the United States.

For those who may not recall, Sessions was the one who rescinded the Cole memo on Jan. 4, 2018. Implemented during the Obama presidency, the Cole memo provided a loose set of guidelines that legalized states would need to follow to keep the federal government off their backs, so to speak. These guidelines included things like keeping weed away from adolescents and ensuring that marijuana grown in a legalized state stayed within its borders. When the Cole memo was rescinded, it gave state-level prosecutors the discretion to bring charges against individuals and businesses in violation of the Controlled Substances Act, even in instances where a state had chosen to legalize the drug.

Last year, Sessions also sent a letter to a handful of his allies in Congress requesting that they repeal the Rohrabacher-Farr Amendment (also known as Rohrabacher-Blumenauer). This rider, which is included with each federal spending bill, disallows the Justice Department from using federal dollars to prosecute medical marijuana businesses operating in legal states. Had Sessions been successful in gaining this repeal, he'd probably have gone after larger-scale medical marijuana businesses.
Sessions' ouster, or his resignation, would appear to improve a path to legalization in the United States. Unfortunately, that's probably not what would happen.

Even if Sessions is fired or resigns, legalization remains unlikely
For as much vitriol as Jeff Sessions has toward the marijuana industry, he's still but one person, and it's Congress that needs the convincing that cannabis should be rescheduled or removed from the controlled substances list.

The first hurdle that would need to be overcome is the fact that the legislative branch is controlled by Republicans. In surveys, self-identified members of the GOP consistently have a negative to mixed view on marijuana, and are therefore unlikely to approve any measure that would legalize or even reschedule the drug. It's possible that a shake-up from the midterm elections could lead to more Democrats and Independents in Congress, thereby giving marijuana a better chance of being rescheduled or removed from the controlled substances list, but there are no certainties at this point.

Next, lawmakers would need to be convinced that the benefits of marijuana outweigh the risks. Now, there are positives here, such as the approval of GW Pharmaceuticals' (NASDAQ:GWPH)cannabidiol-based drug Epidiolex in June by the Food and Drug Administration. This approval to treat two forms of childhood-onset epilepsy allowed GW Pharmaceuticals to be the first to bring a cannabis-derived drug to market. It also demonstrated that cannabis does have medical benefits, contrary to the definition of a Schedule I drug. But there isn't enough clinical data as of yet, at least in the minds of lawmakers, to convince Congress to act to legalize marijuana.

There's also a money issue that lawmakers aren't going to talk about. Per Section 280E of the U.S. tax code, businesses that sell a Schedule I or II substance aren't allowed to take normal corporate income tax deductions, save for cost of goods, which is usually a small percentage. This allows the federal government to tax cannabis income at a very high rate. If marijuana were removed from the controlled substances list, the federal government would actually bring in less money than it does now, because businesses would be allowed to take normal deductions. And simply raising taxes isn't the solution, because higher product prices would push consumers into illicit channels.

Lastly, don't overlook the role Sessions has played in fueling the cannabis movement. If Sessions and his anti-weed views were to step out of the spotlight, it's possible that pro-cannabis momentum could lose steam without that voice of opposition. What might look like an instant positive for the industry if Sessions is fired or resigns is actually not that big of a deal, after all.

 

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Posted without further comment.


Nancy Pelosi Says Marijuana Reform Depends On Trump


The fate of federal marijuana policy reform is squarely in the hands of President Donald Trump, no matter what happens in November’s midterm elections, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said Friday.

During a briefing with reporters on her party’s legislative agenda in Washington, D.C., Pelosi was asked by journalist Matt Laslo whether a Democratically controlled Congress would push forward with cannabis-policy reform next year.

“Unlike in past elections, a lot of Democrats this year are running in support of marijuana reform or marijuana decriminalization,” Laslo asked. “If you guys can recapture control of the House, would you promise to bring those bills up for a vote? How would you deal with that—and is that a priority for you as speaker?”

“Well, the marijuana initiatives have received bipartisan support on the floor of the House,” Pelosi responded, likely referring to amendments to shield state medical cannabis laws that have been approved in past years. “I don’t know where the president is on any of this. So any decision about how we go forward would have to reflect where we can get the result.”

“But any success we could have would depend on the public weighing in,” she added. “Again, you’ve heard me say it, over and over: Public sentiment is everything.”

Watch the full exchange below:


Pelosi’s lack of clear commitment to prioritize cannabis legislation if Democrats control Congress in 2019 squares with comments made earlier this week by her second-in-command, Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD).

“We haven’t talked about that,” Hoyer said when asked by Laslo.

Most political analysts believe Democrats will gain control of the House of Representatives. According to FiveThirtyEight, Democrats have an 80 percent chance of flipping between 17 and 59 seats.

Winning the House would allow Pelosi to set key committee assignments and decide which bills to bring to the floor. Obstructionism by several GOP committee chairs has prevented marijuana-reform bills from advancing during the current Congress.

Of course, legislation passed by Congress requires the president’s signature to become law. And that’s where Trump comes into the equation.

But despite the uncertainty Pelosi expressed about the president’s position, when asked about his views on a Senate bill that would enact sweeping marijuana reforms, Trump indicated in June that he would be inclined to sign it into law if it were sent to his desk.

The president has said little else about his views on marijuana reform since taking office.

As Pelosi pointed out Friday, marijuana reform has proven more popular than most political issues or politicians in the country—chief among them Trump himself.

The minority leader referenced a poll taken earlier this year on voter support for the president and issues like tax reform in the western Pennsylvania congressional district where Democratic Rep. Conor Lamb scored an upset victory in April

“But guess what was more popular than both of them? Marijuana!” Pelosi said. “In that district, is that stunning?”

Indeed, the survey found that likely voters in Lamb’s district—which Trump carried in 2016—support legalizing marijuana by a margin of 46 percent to 43 percent.

And it is possible that medical cannabis, which launched in Pennsylvania earlier this year to great fanfare and booming sales, helped Lamb win his seat.

In a debate in March, Lamb said he supported medical cannabis as well as legalization.

As for Democratic leadership, Pelosi stopped short from a full-throated endorsement and also declined to declare cannabis reform a top priority.

“I don’t know what form it will take, but I have supported these initiatives in my own state of California,” she said. “So I’ll see what is possible.”

 

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“I assure you that ONDCP seeks all perspectives, positive or negative, when formulating Administration policy. You have my full and firm commitment that ONDCP will be completely objective and dispassionate in collecting all relevant facts and peer-reviewed scientific research on all drugs, including marijuana.”​

Hi - I'm from the Government. You can tell I'm lying...its when my lips are moving


The White House Confirms, Yup, It’s Been Running A Marijuana Committee
The admission comes after BuzzFeed News uncovered the committee’s existence and reported on its requests for negative information on marijuana.

The Trump administration was evasive in August when BuzzFeed News reported on a secretive marijuana committee operated by the White House — detailing memos that indicated the committee’s agenda to propagate negative attitudes toward pot and portray the drug as a national threat.

But now the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) has acknowledged the committee’s existence in a letter to a Democratic senator seeking information in light of BuzzFeed News’ report.

At the time of that report, several agencies declined to say whether the committee even existed. The White House, when asked, only obliquely referred to a “deliberative process.”

But after Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado questioned top officials about trying to skew data for “backward” political purposes, the ONDCP confirmed to him that the committee is underway, but argued that its work will be unbiased.

In a letter obtained by BuzzFeed News, ONDCP Acting Director James Carroll says the “intent of the marijuana policy coordinating committee” is to work with federal and state partners to assess “rapidly changing drug markets.”

Carroll insisted the committee was neither secretive nor subjective, saying in his Sept. 21 letter that federal officials are taking a “completely objective” approach while seeking “all perspectives, positive or negative.”

However, BuzzFeed News first reported in August on several memos sent to federal agencies concerning the Marijuana Policy Coordination Committee, which solely sought negative information on the drug. The memos instructed 14 agencies and the Drug Enforcement Administration to submit “data demonstrating the most significant negative trends” on the drug and identify issues with state legalization ballot measures, in part to prepare a report for President Donald Trump, who has previously supported states’ rights on marijuana.

The committee complained in one memo that the narrative around marijuana is unfairly biased in favor of the drug and said it wanted to turn the tide on increasing marijuana use.

As BuzzFeed News reported, the committee, a coalition of federal agencies assembled by the White House, met on July 27. The Education Department confirmed it handed over documents to the committee, while the Department of State deferred questions to the White House. Several agencies declined to comment. The White House told BuzzFeed News at the time it was pursuing “internal, deliberative process to craft the President’s policies on a number of important issues facing the American people, and ensure consistency with the President’s agenda.”

Sen. Bennet probed the White House in an Aug. 30 letter, questioning whether the committee was an “intentional effort to mislead the American people.”

“At a time when we should be investing in objective and peer-reviewed scientific research on marijuana and the effects of legalization, the White House is instead using taxpayer money to spread a politically-driven narrative,” said Bennet, who pointed out that the eight states with marijuana legalization laws are ready to work with the administration.

In his response on Sept. 21, Carroll stated, “I assure you that ONDCP seeks all perspectives, positive or negative, when formulating Administration policy. You have my full and firm commitment that ONDCP will be completely objective and dispassionate in collecting all relevant facts and peer-reviewed scientific research on all drugs, including marijuana.”

Bennet wants the White House to keep that promise, he told BuzzFeed News.

“In Colorado, we’ve made a deliberate effort to ensure fact-based data informs our marijuana policies,” the Democratic senator said in a statement. “Government-sponsored propaganda shouldn’t undermine that effort. I intend to hold the ONDCP to its commitment to present objective and scientific information about marijuana to the American public.”

BuzzFeed News followed up with the White House on Monday asking if it had any records that show the committee is seeking both positive and negative information about marijuana.

It’s unclear who was responsible for creating the committee. Carroll tried to distance himself by saying he didn’t attend the committee’s meeting in July, but he didn’t explain who is driving the committee’s work, nor did the White House answer questions about who’s behind it.

Carroll also suggested in his letter to Bennet that the committee is not secretive, although it was never publicly announced.

“ONDCP has a history of working with Federal, state, local, and tribal partners to support data collection efforts on all types of drugs to help assess the impact of rapidly changing drug markets,” he added. “Although I did not participate in this meeting, it is my understanding that this was the intent of the marijuana policy coordinating committee, which is one of hundreds of standing policy coordinating committees (PCCs) that serve as a mechanism for routine interagency processes in every administration. The article you referenced in your letter implies that PCCs are somehow secret, unusual, or outside the appropriate process for policy development in the executive branch.”

Since Carroll said he did not attend the meeting, BuzzFeed News also asked who had assembled the committee and who attended its July 27 meeting, if a presentation had been given to the president, and what the committee’s next steps were. The White House did not immediately respond.

 

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Politics
Lawmakers Ask Why Trump’s ‘Buy American’ Policy Doesn’t Apply To Marijuana

A bipartisan group of U.S. representatives is seeking answers about why the federal government is seemingly favoring foreign marijuana suppliers while stalling the approval of additional domestic cannabis producers.

In a letter addressed to the acting administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, 15 members of Congress, led by Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Eric Swalwell (D-CA), expressed “deep concern” over the delay in reviewing and approving domestic cultivators of marijuana for research purposes.

Since 1968, there has been just one supplier of marijuana for research purposes in the United States—the University of Mississippi. In August 2016, the DEA announced a change in policy—”designed to foster research”—to allow more domestic entities to grow and distribute cannabis for research purposes.

Even Sessions, a longtime legalization opponent, has said that expanding the domestic supply of research marijuana would be beneficial. “I think it would be healthy to have some more competition in the supply,” the attorney general testified in a hearing last year.

But despite Sessions’s statement, some lawmakers are accusing the Department of Justice (DOJ) of stalling the review of at least 26 applications submitted to the DEA by would-be domestic marijuana suppliers. “Unfortunately, in the two years since DEA’s new policy, no additional manufacturers have been approved,” the U.S. representatives wrote in the Friday letter.

Meanwhile, on September 18, the DEA granted approval of the importation of cannabis capsules from Tilray Inc., a Canadian company, to supply research conducted by the Center for Medical Cannabis Research at the University of California San Diego.

This illustrated the “need for additional domestic manufacturers of marijuana for research purposes,” the lawmakers wrote. “The one manufacturer in the U.S. does not offer capsules of cannabis compounds. If there were other domestic manufacturers, they might offer this option.”

Gaetz had previously expressed frustration in a tweet about the feds’ approval of cannabis imports while blocking expanded domestic cultivation, and last month the House Judiciary Committee approved a bill he authored that would force Sessions’s department to begin issuing new licenses.

In the new joint letter, the representatives point to the hypocrisy of Trump’s executive order to “Buy American and Hire American” while American marijuana suppliers awaiting approval continue to go ignored.

Members of Congress have pressed the DEA and the DOJ for answers since the agency began accepting cultivation license applications. They argue that limiting the domestic supply of marijuana for research purposes is detrimental to a greater understanding of marijuana’s effects on health and society.

“Research on marijuana is necessary to resolve critical questions of public health and safety, such as learning the impacts of marijuana on developing brains and formulating methods to test marijuana impairment in drivers,” Sens. Kamala Harris (D-CA) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT) wrote in a separate letter to Sessions in April.

In August, Marijuana Moment reported the DEA’s move to increase the quota of cannabis that can be grown in the U.S. for research purposes in 2019—hinting at progress in the process of approving more domestic marijuana suppliers.

But while progress on licensing seems stalled, the lawmakers behind the new letter to the DEA and DOJ are confident that it’s only a matter of time before there is a more diverse selection of marijuana for research purposes in the U.S.

“There is strong and bipartisan interest in Congress in increasing the number of manufacturers in the U.S. of cannabis for research,” they wrote. “While Congress will act if the Administration does not, the Administration could make this goal a reality much more quickly if it approved some of the pending applications.”

The representatives posed a series of pointed questions to Sessions and acting DEA head Uttam Dhillon about the Trump administration’s review of pending cultivation applications and the timetable for issuing licenses.

They are requesting a “prompt response.”

 

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Election 2018: A Complete Guide to Cannabis on the Ballot

Cannabis legalization goes before the voters in a number of states on Nov. 6. This year’s highlights:

• Michigan and North Dakota will decide statewide measures on the legalization of adult-use cannabis.
• Utah and Missouri will consider medical marijuana legalization initiatives.
• Other states will consider smaller reforms or advisory measures, including Ohio and Wisconsin.

Leafly’s political staff will continually update this page with the latest poll numbers, financial contributions, and election data. Follow our campaign features and expanded coverage at Leafly Politics.

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Nine states and Washington DC have legalized the adult use of cannabis. Thirty-one states allow patients to legally access medical marijuana. Click map to enlarge. (Elysse Feigenblatt/Leafly)


In November, Michigan and North Dakota are voting on adult-use legalization. Missouri and Utah will consider medical legalization. Click map to enlarge. (Elysse Feigenblatt/Leafly)
States in Play: November 2018
Adult Use

State Ballot Measure Current Status
Michigan Proposal 1 2018 polls:
61% Yes
35% No
5% Undecided
North Dakota Measure 3 No polling available.
Medical

State Proposal Current Status
Missouri Amendment 2
Amendment 3
Proposition C No polling yet
Utah Proposition 2 Yes: 64%
No: 33%
Undecided: 2%
Local Decriminalization

Location Ballot Measure What It Affects Status
Dayton, Ohio Advisory measure City of Dayton Non-binding advisory vote: If passed, it would still take a city commission vote to amend city ordinances
Ohio State Issue 1 Entire state of Ohio Measure would reduce felony drug & paraphernalia possession to misdemeanors
Wisconsin County-by-County Advisory Referendums 16 of Wisconsin's 72 counties 16 counties will vote on cannabis policy. Some on medical, some on adult use. All will be non-binding, advisory votes only.
Statewide Ballot Measures
Michigan

Proposal 18-1, Adult Use

Prop 18-1 would legalize cannabis for adults 21 or older. The measure would allow flower, concentrates, and cannabis-infused edibles, as well as homegrow (up to 12 plants) for personal consumption. Possession limits: 10 ounces of cannabis flower. Local opt-out would be allowed, giving local municipalities the ability to ban or severely restrict cannabis businesses. A 10% cannabis tax would be imposed on retail sales. That revenue would be devoted to regulatory costs, clinical research, schools, roads, and municipalities where cannabis businesses are located.

Who’s backing the initiative: The MI Legalize 2018 campaign includes buy-in from the Coalition To Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, Michigan NORML, the ACLU, the Drug Policy Alliance, the Marijuana Policy Project, the marijuana law section of the State Bar Association, and other groups. That amount of unity is unusual for a legalization campaign–and indicative of the organizational power behind the movement in Michigan.

Who’s opposing it: Nobody yet.

See the full text of the measure here.

Flying the flag for legalization at Michigan’s annual Hash Bash. (Courtesy MI Legalize)
Missouri

Amendment 2, Medical (New Approach Missouri)
Amendment 3, Medical (Ben Bradshaw)
Proposition C, Medical (Travis Brown)

Yes, Missouri has three competing measures on the same ballot. That’s the bad news. The good news: It’s pretty easy to differentiate between them. Amendment 2 is the grassroots standard MMJ measure. Amendment 3 and Proposition C are one-off attempts by individuals to pass measures that may or may not benefit them personally.

Leafly’s Dave Howard has an outstanding piece explaining the differences between the three measures, linked here.


RELATED STORY
Missouri Has Three Legalization Measures. Two Are Very Odd
Amendment 2: This New Approach Missouri effort would amend the Missouri Constitution to legalize, tax, and regulate marijuana for medical purposes. It would:

• Tax medical cannabis at 4%.
• Use tax revenue for healthcare services for military veterans, and administer the state cannabis regulatory program.
• Allow patients to grow their own medical cannabis.

Amendment 3: This effort, led by personal injury lawyer Ben Bradshaw, would amend the Missouri Constitution to legalize, tax, and regulate marijuana for medical purposes. It would:

• Tax medical cannabis at 15%.
• Use tax revenue to establish and fund a state-run cancer research institute.
• Not allow medical patients to grow their own cannabis.
• The cancer institute would be chaired by Brad Bradshaw, author of the amendment.
• Brad Bradshaw would also select the institute’s governing board.

Proposition C: This measure, written and led by lobbyist Travis H. Brown, would amend Missouri law to allow the growth, sale, and use of marijuana for medical purposes. It would:

• Tax medical cannabis at 2%.
• Create regulations and licensing procedures for medical cannabis facilities (cultivation, production, testing, dispensing).
• Not allow medical patients to grow their own cannabis.
• Use tax revenue for veterans’ services, drug treatment, early childhood education, and public safety in cities with medical marijuana facilities.

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The latest: The wild cards in this race are, of course, Brad Bradshaw and Travis H. Brown, authors of the two off-brand initiatives. Bradshaw, a physician and personal injury lawyer based in Springfield, is essentially running a one-man “Ohio ’15” campaign, whereby he would control all the tax revenue generated by the state’s MMJ system. After getting his measure on the ballot, he then sued to knock the competing measures off the ballot. The courts tossed the case in early September.

Brown, a public affairs lobbyist, is keeping a lower profile, but St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Tony Messenger has accused Brown of being a stalking horse for a group of silent financial partners tied to St. Louis County Executive Steve Senger. According to Messenger, Prop C’s language grants local municipal authorities like Senger wide zoning and regulatory power to determine who gets the licenses to grow and sell medical cannabis.

The odds: “I think it has a good chance of passing,” Gov. Mike Parson said of medical cannabis legalization, in an interview with KMBC’s Micheal Mahoney on Sept. 5. Of course, Parson didn’t say which version of legalization he believes will carry the day.

North Dakota

Measure 3, Adult Use

With Measure 3, it feels like the state’s legalization advocates decided to roll the dice on a tomato-plant initiative,* the kind of measure envisioned by the cannabis pioneer Jack Herer. Measure 3 would remove “hashish, marijuana, and tetrahydrocannabinols” from the state’s list of Schedule I substances, and prohibit prosecution of anyone over 21 for any non-violent cannabis related activity (including growing, processing, selling, or testing), except for the sale of cannabis to a person under 21. The measure would also require the automatic expungement of prior cannabis arrests and convictions.

What Measure 3 would not do is regulate cannabis in any way. There’s no mention of licensing. There are no limits on possession. North Dakotans could stack it like hay bales in the barn. North Dakotans could see that as a feature or a bug, hard to say.

North Dakota residents could stack cannabis like bales of hay under the no-limit language in Measure 3. (kevinjeon00/iStock)
Who’s backing the measure: Legalize ND, the local advocacy group, is flying solo here. There’s no financial help or drafting language from Drug Policy Alliance or the Marijuana Policy Project. “We leave our bill wide open so the legislature can do their job — regulations, taxes, zoning, whatever,” Cole Haymond, an adviser to the Legalize ND campaign, told the Washington Post’s Christopher Ingraham. “This bill is by far the most progressive yet most conservative marijuana legalization bill that will be on any ballot across the country.”

See the full text of the measure here.

* A tomato-plant initiative is a measure that treats the cannabis plant like a tomato plant, free for all to grow, consume and distribute as any person sees fit, without any state or local regulation whatsoever.


Utah

Proposition 2, Medical

Utah’s Prop 2 would establish a state-controlled process that allows persons with qualifying medical conditions (cancer, HIV, epilepsy, chronic pain, ALS, Alzheimer’s, Crohn’s disease, MS, PTSD, autism) to acquire and use medical cannabis.

Leafly’s David Downs has an informative FAQ on what Prop 2 would and wouldn’t do, available here.

In certain limited circumstances, patients would be allowed to grow up to six cannabis plants for personal medical use. Prop. 2 would authorize the establishment of facilities that grow, process, test, or sell medical cannabis and require those facilities to be licensed by the state; and establish state controls on those licensed facilities, including: seed-to-sale inventory tracking, as well as limits on packaging, advertising, and the types of products allowed.

Medical marijuana enjoys widespread support throughout the state. It was polling at 75% earlier this year, but recently that support dropped to 64% following the Mormon church’s official statement opposing Prop 2.

Current Polling

Click on chart to enlarge. (UtahPolicy.com)
Who’s backing the proposition: The Utah Patients Coalition, led by director DJ Schanz, includes support from TRUCE (a Utah patients group), Libertas Institute (a Utah think tank), and the Marijuana Policy Project.

Who’s opposing it: The Utah Medical Association, Gov. Gary Herbert, and the leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the single most powerful political entity in the state. The Drug Safe Utah Coalition, which is running an active “No on Prop 2” campaign, includes the Utah Sheriffs’ Association, DARE Utah, the Utah Eagle Forum, and others.

See the full text of the measure here.

Down Ballot: Contests Affecting Cannabis


California
Governor

At the top of the ticket, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom is seen as a shoo-in to replace Gov. Jerry Brown, which would increase cannabis’ support in the governor’s mansion. Gov. Brown has repeatedly denigrated cannabis users as lazy and unfocused. By contrast, former San Francisco Mayor Newsom embraced cannabis law reforms early, similar to his leadership on same-sex marriage.

US Senate

Polls suggest California Sen. Diane Feinstein (D) will skate into re-election in the mid-terms, fending off an insurgency on her progressive flank. After decades as a drug war hawk, Feinstein has been forced into evolving on supporting states’ rights to set cannabis policy. This September, the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee member also signed on as a co-sponsor of a cannabis descheduling bill.

US House

Also of note in California, incumbent Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R – Huntington Beach)—cannabis’ most staunch ally in the House of Representatives—faces a formidable Republican challenger for his seat. After 2016’s election interference by Russia, Rep. Rohrabacher’s pro-Russia statements and positions have dogged him.

Municipal Cannabis Measures

At the local city and county level, California is awash in dozens if not more than 100 ballot initiatives to set local cannabis taxes and/or decide on allowing local dispensaries or farms. Voters also hold the power to approve of local stores and cannabis businesses through the election of hundreds of local city council members or county supervisors, many of whom are taking key positions on local store bans.

Florida
Governor

The race between Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum (D) and Rep. Ron DeSantis (R) is a battle between an unabashed advocate of legalized regulation (Gillum) and an old-school prohibitionist (DeSantis). Whoever replaces outgoing Gov. Rick Scott will have a lot of say over the state’s emerging medical marijuana system, and over any possible adult-use legalization campaign. Leafly Deputy Editor Bruce Barcott wrote about the race here.

Ohio
Statewide
State Issue 1, an omnibus drug policy reform measure, would reduce many cannabis possession and paraphernalia felonies to misdemeanors.

City of Dayton
Dayton voters will consider an advisory measure to decriminalize small amounts of cannabis. If voters pass the measure, the city council would still have to vote to confirm it. The measure calls on the council to eliminate the current $150 fine for minor misdemeanor marijuana and hashish possession offenses.

Wisconsin

(Cannabadger.com)
In an unusual campaign, cannabis activists in the Badger State have waged county-by-county combat to put legalization advisory measures on the ballot in November.

Because Wisconsin has no statewide initiative process, any full-state legalization measure would have to be approved by the state legislature.

These county ballots are expected to show legislators how popular cannabis reform is, and put added pressure on them to pass statewide medical or adult-use legalization in 2019.



https://www.leafly.com/news/politic...lete-guide-to-cannabis-on-the-ballot#dsq-app1

 

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U.S. government clarifies policy on border crossing for Canadian cannabis employees

fter headlines circulated about how cannabis professionals should be concerned when crossing the border, the U.S. government said in a statement Tuesday that Canadian cannabis professionals are free to cross the border for non-work related reasons.

“A Canadian citizen working in or facilitating the proliferation of the legal marijuana industry in Canada, coming to the U.S. for reasons unrelated to the marijuana industry will generally be admissible to the U.S.,” the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency said in the statement.

The confusion stems from another statement made in September from U.S. Customs that said being involved in the Canadian cannabis industry could “affect admissibility to the U.S.”

The statement created a ripple of fear throughout the industry as employees as well as lawyers, accountants and investors working in the industry had reason to be concerned about ever crossing the border whether for work or personal reasons.

“People had cancelled trips, they had pulled articles that they had written, they were dismantling websites, there was really quite a massive response to this threat,” said Patricia Olasker, a partner at Davies Ward Phillips & Vinberg LLP. “All the Bay Street law firms that practice in this area have been comparing notes on the implication of that for our practice, because that original directive was broad enough to capture professional advisers.”

“This [updated statement] creates quite some assurance that the mere fact of working in the industry won’t exclude you. Obviously use, and other reasons still pertain, but just being employed shouldn’t be a factor,” Ms. Olasker added.

Since cannabis still remains illegal at the federal level in the U.S., the policy remains clear that people working in the industry still may not be allowed to cross the border if the trip is work-related. It does however seem to be a step in the right direction.

“The language is certainly a welcome improvement and signifies greater global normalization of Canada’s world-leading cannabis sector,” said Allan Rewak, executive director of the Cannabis Council of Canada, an organization that represents Canadian LPs.

 

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And who is surprised???

U.S. tobacco giant Altria in talks with Canadian cannabis company

A major U.S. tobacco company is reportedly in talks to acquire an equity stake in a Canadian licensed producer.

Altria Group Inc. executives have recently met with Canadian cannabis grower Aphria Inc. on multiple occasions to discuss their interest in acquiring a minority stake in the Leamington, Ontario-based company with an intention to eventually hold a majority of Aphria’s shares. The most recent meeting took place on Monday in Leamington.

Altria, based in Virginia, makes tobacco products, cigars and wine and has a market capitalization of US $119-billion. It owns Philip Morris USA, the maker of Marlboro cigarettes, and also has a 10 percent stake in Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV, which is the world’s largest brewing company.

Aphria’s market value as of Wednesday afternoon was $4.3-billion, its stock doubling since August to $17.37. They are known for being an incredibly low cost producer, at a cost of less than $1 per gram.

Earlier this year, global alcohol giant Constellation Brands Inc. announced its plan to transition from its 10 percent stake to a majority stakeholder position with Canopy Growth Corp. Molson Coors Brewing Co. also announced earlier this year that it will be entering a joint venture with Quebec-based grower, HEXO Corp. Altria plans for a relationship similar to that of Constellation Brands and Canopy Growth.

“Big consumer companies are increasingly looking to forge alliances with cannabis growers, which is helping fuel a frenzy and driving stock prices higher as Canada prepares for the legalization of recreational marijuana next Wednesday,” according to the Globe and Mail.

Altria has been pushing to expand on conventional cigarettes to having “less harmful” products in its portfolio including heated tobacco and e-vapor as well as smokeless and oral products.

In its last fiscal year to Dec. 31, 2017, Altria recorded US$25.6-billion in net revenues, a small decline from the year prior. $22.6-billion of these revenues were from smokeable products.

The sources have asked to remain unnamed while the discussions remain private and also said that it could still be a while before Altria and Aphria make a deal and that the arrangement could still fall through.

 

[Baron23]

6 states without ballot initiatives where voters' choices will greatly affect marijuana legalization



We’re four weeks away from the November midterm elections, and obviously a lot in the political landscape could change on that day. Democrats could retake Congress, governor’s mansions could flip to a new party and so much more, writes Joseph Misulonas.

And while many marijuana advocates are focused on cannabis legalization ballot initiatives in states like Michigan, Utah and North Dakota, there are still plenty of places where marijuana legalization can achieve major victories outside of ballot initiatives. Here are six states where voters could greatly influence marijuana legalization:

1. Illinois
The Illinois gubernatorial race will feature a clash between Democrat J.B. Pritzker, who supports legalizing recreational marijuana, and Incumbent Republican Governor Bruce Rauner, who even in the past few days reiterated that he does not support legalizing cannabis recreationally. Considering Pritzker is polling about 10 points ahead of Rauner, it’s pretty certain Illinois will get a pro-marijuana governor next month.

2. Connecticut
Like in Illinois, the Democratic candidate for governor Ned Lamont supports legalizing recreational marijuana while Republican candidate Bob Stefanowski is less motivated to do so. However, Lamont and Stefanowski are pretty close in the polls, so it’s not quite the sure thing as it is in Illinois.

3. Florida

Progressive Andrew Gillum shocked many pundits when he nabbed the Democratic nomination for governor in Florida. Gillum has called to legalize recreational marijuana as part of his platform. His Republican opponent, Ron DeSantis, says he wants to expand the state’s medical marijuana program but doesn’t think legalizing it recreationally is a good idea. Gillum and DeSantis are also running neck-and-neck.

4. Wisconsin
Wisconsin is a slightly different state when it comes to marijuana. Current incumbent Republican Scott Walker opposes any sort of marijuana legalization, but his Democratic opponent Tony Evers also doesn’t support recreational legalization. However, Evers says he thinks the state should hold a referendum on legalization, so that indicates that if the voters say they want legalization, he’ll stay out of the way. Again, this is another very tight race.

5. Minnesota
Minnesota is more like Illinois than the previous states. Democratic candidate Tim Walz says he supports legalizing recreational marijuana if elected governor. Meanwhile his opponent and Trump ally Jeff Johnson does not. Walz is largely expected to win next month.

6. Any Place with a Vulnerable Republican in Congress
The fact is marijuana legalization will probably not occur at the federal level as long as Republicans control both the House and Senate. Meanwhile many Democratic politicians have promised to advance pro-cannabis bills if they retake the majorities in Congress. So if you live in an area with either a vulnerable incumbent Republican or a toss-up race where Democrats can nab a seat in Congress, voting against the GOP is probably the best way to take a step closer towards marijuana legalization at the national level.

 

[Baron23]

Marijuana and the Mid-Terms: A new opportunity for cannabis legalization in some key Midwestern states

he momentum for cannabis reform in the U.S., which has had landmark political success beginning in 2012, appears to be gaining speed ahead of next month’s midterm elections.

Voters in Michigan and North Dakota will be deciding on the legalization of adult-use, recreational cannabis in November while Utah and Missouri voters will look at several medical marijuana measures.

Several municipalities in Ohio, meanwhile, are considering cannabis decriminalization. And residents of at least 16 counties and two cities in Wisconsin will vote on a wide range of cannabis issues.

At the moment cannabis is legal in some form in 30 states and the District of Columbia. Nine states have also legalized recreational pot for adults.

And despite the federal government’s classification of all cannabis as illegal, a new Pew Research Center survey found that nearly two-thirds of U.S. adults support marijuana legalization. That’s double the amount that reportedly supported legalizing cannabis in 2000.

For cannabis advocates and political observers, the November elections also mark the first time in three years that Midwestern states are voting on cannabis issues. An attempt at legalization in 2015 in Ohio, which would have created commercial “marijuana monopolies” in that state, was soundly defeated.

Douglas Berman, a law professor at Ohio State’s Moritz College of Law, said it makes sense that the cannabis legalization movement would be gaining traction now in the traditionally conservative Midwest.

“I think it’s a function of more progressive states already having moved forward through the ballot process,” he told 420 Intel. “So as activists and the moneyed interests supporting those activists - including industry players - look for new markets and new places to move forward with reform, these Midwestern states are most obvious turn.”

Berman pointed to two factors that have made cannabis legalization via voter initiatives more appealing to Midwestern voters. First, there’s the generational issue.

State lawmakers, he said, “tend to be older and still reflective of an older mindset; of ‘Just Say No to Drugs’ and fearful of what marijuana reforms could look like. Whereas the voting population is a little bit more mixed and generally less fearful of this kind of reform.”

And state legislators often struggle with the basic concepts and execution of marijuana reforms, he noted; while cannabis proponents have been able to draft their own versions of such reforms and successfully take them directly to the voters.

There’s also the growing societal acceptance of cannabis in the U.S.

"Our culture has already legalized marijuana. Now it's a question of, 'How quickly will the laws catch up?'" Matthew Schweich, deputy director at the Marijuana Policy Project and campaign director for Michigan’s Coalition to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, told Associated Press.

And the issue of cannabis legalization isn’t just affecting Midwest politics. Marijuana reform has been debated in the current, high-profile Texas senate race between Republican incumbent Ted Cruz and his Democratic challenger, Beto O’Rourke.

That being said, Ohio State’s Douglas Berman dismisses some recent analysis that the growing cannabis legalization trend has made pot virtually legal across much of the country.

“De facto legalization means you feel comfortable doing it and you don’t really worry about getting in trouble for doing it,” he said. “And that’s not the reality anywhere.”

But Berman added this is the first election cycle he’s seen where there’s been this amount of open support for marijuana policy reforms.

 

[momofthegoons]

High-end marijuana retailer MedMen just spent $682 million on the largest US cannabis acquisition in history

Daniel Yi, MedMen's senior vice president of corporate communications.
Sarah Jacobs/Business Insider

• MedMen, one of the most recognizable brands in the booming cannabis industry, acquired the medical-marijuana retailer PharmaCann in a $682 million stock transaction, the companies announced on Thursday.
• It's the largest cannabis acquisition in the US to date.
• The acquisition gives the combined firm access to 79 retail and cultivation licenses in 12 states, the companies said.

MedMen, one of the most recognizable brands in the rapidly expanding cannabis industry, acquired the medical-marijuana dispensary chain PharmaCann in a $682 million all-stock transaction, the companies announced Thursday.

It's the largest cannabis acquisition in the US to date.

Based in Los Angeles, MedMen has 14 high-end marijuana dispensaries — which some have compared to Apple Stores— in California, Nevada, and New York, and it's listed on the Canadian Securities Exchange.

The brand has positioned its stores on some of the world's trendiest shopping streets. There are locations on Venice Beach's Abbot Kinney Boulevard, the Las Vegas Strip, and New York's Fifth Avenue.

The PharmaCann acquisition nearly doubles MedMen's footprint in the US. PharmaCann, based in Illinois, operates 10 facilities in the Midwest, including in Michigan, where voters are set to vote on November 6 on legalizing recreational marijuana.

The combined company will have a portfolio of 79 cannabis licenses across 12 states, including 66 retail stores and 13 cultivation licenses, PharmaCann and MedMen said.

"This is a transformative acquisition that will create the largest US cannabis company in the world's largest cannabis market," MedMen CEO Adam Bierman said in a statement.

"This would not have been possible even two years ago and is a testament to how far both the industry and these two companies have evolved," he added.

 

[Baron23]

Politics
Democrats And Republicans Clash Over Which Party Will Lead On Marijuana In 2019

Which party is going to take a leadership role in advancing marijuana reform after the midterm elections? It depends on who you ask.

On Thursday, both Reps. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) and Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) indicated that their respective party would be backing legislation to change federal cannabis laws in the months after November’s critical election. Rohrabacher said that he’d received assurances that the White House would support reform efforts during the 116th Congress, which begins in January.

“It could be as early as spring of 2019, but definitely in the next legislative session,” he said, noting that President Donald Trump planned to keep his promise to support a bipartisan bill to protect legal states from federal interference.

Later, Blumenauer—a close colleague of the Republican congressman when it comes to cannabis reform efforts—said that Democrats would promote legislation to change cannabis laws in the first half of 2019 if his party retakes the House.

“With Democrats in control, we will be able to have the legislative process work and we’ll see more progress in a relatively short order, I think.”

“These will be some of the easiest things to do in the first six months of a new Congress because they’re supported by the public, the legislation is already teed up and ready to go,” Blumenauer said in an interview with Bloomberg. “It’s one of these areas of progress that will show we can get our act together and move forward.”

“It doesn’t have to be the top priority. It’s simpler than health care or global warming. And it’s supported by the public. I think it’s a no-brainer. I think it moves in the next six months.”

Watch the full interview here:

Blumenauer seems to be breaking somewhat from his party’s leadership. House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD), for example, said last month that top Democrats haven’t yet “talked about” promoting federal marijuana legislation if the party retakes the House in the midterm elections. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) also suggested that the fate of federal cannabis reform would depend, in part, on the will of the president.

“I don’t know where the president is on any of this,” Pelosi said. “So any decision about how we go forward would have to reflect where we can get the result.”

 

[Baron23]

Trump Plans To Back Legal Medical Marijuana After Midterms, GOP Congressman Says

Marijuana reform will likely be on the Trump administration’s agenda after the midterm elections, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) said on Thursday.

In an interview with Fox Business, Rohrabacher said he’s been “talking to people inside the White House” and members of President Donald Trump’s inner circle about ending cannabis prohibition. The congressman said he’s been “reassured that the president intends on keeping his campaign promise” to protect local marijuana policies from federal interference.

Though Rohrabacher didn’t point to specific legislation that the president is reportedly interested in advancing, he said that details would likely begin to take shape after November 6.

“I would expect after the election we will sit down and we’ll start hammering out something that is specific and real.”

Trump has previously voiced support for a bipartisan bill, introduced by Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Cory Gardner (R-CO), which would amend the Controlled Substances Act to protect states that legalize cannabis from federal interference. He also embraced medical cannabis during his presidential campaign, saying that he knows people who have benefited from using it.

Rohrabacher, in the new interview published Thursday, laid out a vague timeline for anticipated congressional action on marijuana reform.

“It could be as early as spring of 2019, but definitely in the next legislative session,” he said.

What remains to be seen is which party will ultimately take the lead on marijuana after the midterms. Though Democrats are generally more supportive of cannabis reform and multiple bills have been introduced to achieve that end, a top House Democrat recently conceded that the party hasn’t been actively discussing plans to pass marijuana legislation.

Asked last month whether Democrats would bring cannabis legislation to the floor if the party retakes the House in November, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) admitted “[w]e haven’t talked about that.”

And House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who is expected to seek the speakership again if Democrats win control of the chamber in the midterms, indicated that the prospects for marijuana legislation would depend on support from the president.

“I don’t know where the president is on any of this,” she said. “So any decision about how we go forward would have to reflect where we can get the result.”

Based on polling, either party stands to benefit from taking on a marijuana friendly agenda. Fewer Republican voters support full legalization, compared to Democrats, but when it comes to medical cannabis, there’s sizable majority support on both sides of the aisle

 

[Baron23]

Trump Administration Seeks Public Comments On Marijuana Reclassification

Specifically, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is asking for public comments about the "abuse potential, actual abuse, medical usefulness, trafficking, and impact of scheduling changes on availability for medical use" of cannabis and several other substances now under international review.

Under current U.S. federal law as well as global drug policy agreements, marijuana is classified in the most restrictive category of Schedule I. At home, that means it is considered illegal and not available for prescription, while research on its potential benefits is heavily restricted. Cannabis's international status means that nations who are signatories of drug control treaties are not supposed to legalize it, though that hasn't stopped Canada and Uruguay from doing so.

Public comments on marijuana's effects and legal status "will be considered in preparing a response from the United States to the World Health Organization (WHO) regarding the abuse liability and diversion of these drugs," Leslie Kux, FDA's associate commissioner for policy, wrote in a Federal Register filing published on Wednesday. "WHO will use this information to consider whether to recommend that certain international restrictions be placed on these drugs."

WHO's Expert Committee on Drug Dependence (ECDD) is meeting in Geneva next month to consider the classification of marijuana and other substances, and is now seeking to "gather information on the legitimate use, harmful use, status of national control and potential impact of international control," the United Nations body said in a notice excerpted in the FDA filing.

Earlier this year, ECDD determined that cannabidiol (CBD), a component of marijuana shown to have medical benefits without intoxicating properties like other cannabinoids such as THC, should not be scheduled under international drug control conventions.

“CBD has been found to be generally well tolerated with a good safety profile,” the UN body found in its critical review. "There is no evidence that CBD as a substance is liable to similar abuse and similar ill-effects as substances...such as cannabis or THC, respectively. The Committee recommended that preparations considered to be pure CBD should not be scheduled.”

The body also agreed to undergo an in-depth critical review of the marijuana plant and its resins and extracts, as well as THC itself. That new review is what triggered the FDA's request for public comment on Wednesday.

The Trump administration sought public comments from interested parties in advance of an earlier UN pre-review on marijuana as well.

"Any comments received will be considered by [the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services] when it prepares a scientific and medical evaluation for drug substances that is responsive to the WHO Questionnaire for these drug substances," the new FDA notice says. "HHS will forward such evaluation of these drug substances to WHO, for WHO's consideration in deciding whether to recommend international control/decontrol of any of these drug substances."

Legalization advocates are hopeful that a hard look at the data on marijuana's effects will inevitably lead to a pro-reform conclusion.

“A careful review of the relevant science does not now, nor has it ever, supported a hard-line approach to cannabis scheduling. Cannabis’s abuse potential relative to other substances, including legal substances like alcohol, tobacco and prescription medications, does not warrant its continued criminalization under either U.S. or international law," Paul Armentano, deputy director of NORML, said in an email. "By any rational assessment, cannabis prohibition is a disproportionate public policy response to behavior that is, at worst, a public health concern. But it should not be a criminal justice matter and international laws should no longer classify it as such."

Mason Tvert, a spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, agreed.

"The time has come for marijuana to be removed from the federal drug schedules. There is no longer any doubt that it has significant medical value, and the science is clear that it is less harmful than many legal medical products," he said. "While marijuana is not harmless — few, if any, products are — it poses less harm than alcohol to consumers and to society. The U.S. led the world into the quagmire of cannabis prohibition, so it should lead the world out of it by descheduling cannabis and implementing a more evidence-based policy."

That said, the feds aren't planning to make any cannabis recommendations to the UN panel ahead of its review meetings next month.

"Instead, HHS will defer such consideration until WHO has made official recommendations to the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, which are expected to be made in mid-2018," the Federal Register notice says. "Any HHS position regarding international control of these drug substances will be preceded by another Federal Register notice soliciting public comments."

In addition to marijuana and its components, the WHO committee is also reviewing several synthetic cannabinoids, fentanyls and other substances.

FDA has hinted that international rescheduling of marijuana and its components could influence changes to its legal status here at home.

This month, FDA publicly released a letter it sent to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) earlier this year suggesting that CBD should be completely removed from federal control.

Cannabidiol has a “negligible potential for abuse” and has a “currently accepted medical use in treatment,” the agency found.

But, because of international drug treaty obligations, FDA conceded that the substance needs to be scheduled, concluding that it should be placed under the least-restrictive category of Schedule V.

“If treaty obligations do not require control of CBD, or if the international controls on CBD change in the future, this recommendation will need to be promptly revisited,” FDA wrote in its analysis to DEA.

That document, dated in May, preceded the WHO's determination that CBD should not be globally scheduled, and was part of the federal government's approval and rescheduling last month of CBD-based drug Epidiolex, which is used for severe epilepsy disorders. It is not clear why the U.S. government subsequently decided to place FDA-approved CBD medications in the federal Schedule V, with an appeal to global treaties that the UN now says shouldn't schedule the substance.

For now, FDA is accepting public comments on marijuana and the other substances currently under UN review via the web until October 31. Interested parties can also submit written comments via mail.

Ultimately, WHO will make a scheduling recommendation for marijuana to UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who oversaw the enactment of drug decriminalization as Portugal's prime minister, a policy he has touted in his current capacity.

 

[Baron23]

'DEAR MR. PRESIDENT': One marijuana company has a bold strategy to save American cannabis producers from getting left in Canada's wake

• The largest publicly traded marijuana companies — even when listed on American exchanges like NYSE — are completely forbidden from operating in the US.
• This means the entire American marijuana sector is missing out on hundreds of billions of dollars of investments that are instead going to Canadian firms.
• Terra Tech CEO Derek Peterson has a plan to change this, and it starts with a full-page ad titled "Dear Mr. President," which is slated to run in the Wall Street Journal next week along with ad slots on "Fox and Friends."

Marijuana stocks are booming this year.

A handful of Canadian cannabis companies have successfully raised billions on American stock exchanges like the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, but thanks to federal laws that forbid them from operating in the US, every cent of that capital is heading north of the border.

Legally-operating US marijuana companies — in places like Colorado where the drug is legal, at least on a state level — have largely missed out on the success stories of their Canadian peers due to federal drug laws that stand between their equity and a listing on a major exchange. Derek Peterson, CEO of California-based Terra Tech, says American companies are being left in the dust.

"The problem that we're under as US operators is these Canadian companies are using the healthy capital market up there to fund and raise a ton of capital, putting us at serious risk," the former investment banker, who has helmed Terra Tech for nearly seven years, said in an interview. "We'll end up being take out candidates for probably great premiums for our shareholders, but the concern is about longevity."

It's a problem that's sending major investments— like Constellation Brands' $4 billion stake in Canopy Growth Corporation — outside of the US. Elsewhere, companies like Green Growth Brands, are pursuing unusual methods like reverse takeovers in order to list on Canadian exchanges and cash in on the trend.

"It'd be foolish to sit on the sidelines and use our own cash to grow our business," Green Growth Brands CEO Peter Horvath, a veteran of American Eagle, DSW, and Victoria's Secret, told Business Insider. "You've got to skate to where the puck is going, not where it is."

Terra Tech and Peterson refuse to stay idle and let American companies get left behind.

In an effort to speed up the modernization laws in the US, Terra Tech plans to take out a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal, aimed directly at President Donald Trump, as soon as next week. Peterson also plans to buy advertising slots during Fox and Friends, the morning talk show that's known to be a favorite of the president.

"If we don't change our laws here and the banks don't have a chance to come in and fund companies and have access to out capital markets, we're going to end up having our industry owned by Canadian conglomerates," Peterson said.

"We would prefer to create our own destiny and have access to the Morgan Stanley's, Bank of Americas, and Goldman Sachs's of the world to be able to raise real capital and compete in the global marketplace."

Until then, most major Wall Street banks will likely stay on the margins. No major sell-side research department except for Cowen has launched coverage of marijuana stocks, despite the largest ones being worth more than many of the other equities they cover.

Canopy Growth, for example, is easily the most valuable publicly traded cannabis company with a market cap of $14 billion, more than double that of the sports-apparel maker Under Armour — and is only covered by two US research shops: Cowen and William O'Neil.

"We're working to at least get a public conversation going around this because I don't think a lot of our political leaders understand what's happening here from a capital markets perspective," Peterson said.

 

[Shredder]

High-end marijuana retailer MedMen just spent $682 million on the largest US cannabis acquisition in history

Daniel Yi, MedMen's senior vice president of corporate communications.
Sarah Jacobs/Business Insider

• MedMen, one of the most recognizable brands in the booming cannabis industry, acquired the medical-marijuana retailer PharmaCann in a $682 million stock transaction, the companies announced on Thursday.
• It's the largest cannabis acquisition in the US to date.
• The acquisition gives the combined firm access to 79 retail and cultivation licenses in 12 states, the companies said.

MedMen, one of the most recognizable brands in the rapidly expanding cannabis industry, acquired the medical-marijuana dispensary chain PharmaCann in a $682 million all-stock transaction, the companies announced Thursday.

It's the largest cannabis acquisition in the US to date.

Based in Los Angeles, MedMen has 14 high-end marijuana dispensaries — which some have compared to Apple Stores— in California, Nevada, and New York, and it's listed on the Canadian Securities Exchange.

The brand has positioned its stores on some of the world's trendiest shopping streets. There are locations on Venice Beach's Abbot Kinney Boulevard, the Las Vegas Strip, and New York's Fifth Avenue.

The PharmaCann acquisition nearly doubles MedMen's footprint in the US. PharmaCann, based in Illinois, operates 10 facilities in the Midwest, including in Michigan, where voters are set to vote on November 6 on legalizing recreational marijuana.

The combined company will have a portfolio of 79 cannabis licenses across 12 states, including 66 retail stores and 13 cultivation licenses, PharmaCann and MedMen said.

"This is a transformative acquisition that will create the largest US cannabis company in the world's largest cannabis market," MedMen CEO Adam Bierman said in a statement.

"This would not have been possible even two years ago and is a testament to how far both the industry and these two companies have evolved," he added.

I guess time will tell if this is a good thing or bad.

 

[Baron23]

Politics
Democrats And Republicans Clash Over Which Party Will Lead On Marijuana In 2019

Which party is going to take a leadership role in advancing marijuana reform after the midterm elections? It depends on who you ask.

On Thursday, both Reps. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) and Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) indicated that their respective party would be backing legislation to change federal cannabis laws in the months after November’s critical election. Rohrabacher said that he’d received assurances that the White House would support reform efforts during the 116th Congress, which begins in January.

“It could be as early as spring of 2019, but definitely in the next legislative session,” he said, noting that President Donald Trump planned to keep his promise to support a bipartisan bill to protect legal states from federal interference.

Later, Blumenauer—a close colleague of the Republican congressman when it comes to cannabis reform efforts—said that Democrats would promote legislation to change cannabis laws in the first half of 2019 if his party retakes the House.

“With Democrats in control, we will be able to have the legislative process work and we’ll see more progress in a relatively short order, I think.”

“These will be some of the easiest things to do in the first six months of a new Congress because they’re supported by the public, the legislation is already teed up and ready to go,” Blumenauer said in an interview with Bloomberg. “It’s one of these areas of progress that will show we can get our act together and move forward.”

“It doesn’t have to be the top priority. It’s simpler than health care or global warming. And it’s supported by the public. I think it’s a no-brainer. I think it moves in the next six months.”

Watch the full interview here:

Blumenauer seems to be breaking somewhat from his party’s leadership. House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD), for example, said last month that top Democrats haven’t yet “talked about” promoting federal marijuana legislation if the party retakes the House in the midterm elections. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) also suggested that the fate of federal cannabis reform would depend, in part, on the will of the president.

“I don’t know where the president is on any of this,” Pelosi said. “So any decision about how we go forward would have to reflect where we can get the result.”

 

[Baron23]

These two states are poised to be the next big marijuana markets

With federal prohibition still alive and well despite record public support for marijuana legalization, the cannabis industry in the United States remains a state-by-state business. The inability to cross state lines has led to a web of complex and disparate state laws and regulations for businesses to navigate. This forces cannabis producers to recreate their entire infrastructure in every new state, rather than scaling up production and shipping products across the country, which impedes their ability to build economies of scale enjoyed by all other businesses.

Retailers generally pay higher wholesale prices because of this, leading to higher prices for consumers at the register.

The state-by-state nature of the U.S. industry has created huge differences in market dynamics from state to state. A number of factors contribute to the attractiveness of a state market for businesses. Does the state have a limited number of licenses or can any qualified applicant obtain one? Does the state allow for medical or adult-use sales? Does the state ban the sale of smokeable products? If it is a medical marijuana state, what are the medical conditions that qualify someone to become a patient, and does that list include chronic pain? Is the market saturated or is there room for growth?

As I’ve written about in a previous column—“Looking For Big Returns In The Cannabis Market? Look East, Not West”—while much of the media attention goes to highly developed and saturated adult-use markets like Colorado, California, and Washington, the public markets tend to offer the highest valuations to companies with operations in more limited-license states, often with medical marijuana laws that have room for growth and expansion. It is why companies with operations in places like Florida and New York tend to enjoy higher valuations than their counterparts on the West Coast, despite generally showing lower annual revenue in more restricted markets.

So what are the next state-legal markets likely to excite the capital markets?

To determine the best candidates, I considered states that have medical marijuana laws with limited licenses available to operators, and a clear path to expanding the medical program and/or adopting full legalization. Looking ahead to the next couple of years, two states stand out as likely the next big marijuana markets: New Jersey and Illinois.

Both states have followed a remarkably similar path toward full legalization, with Illinois a near mirror of the process in New Jersey, only one year behind.

New Jersey
Let’s start with the Garden State, as it has gotten the bulk of the media attention between the two over the past year. New Jersey has had a medical marijuana law on the books going back to 2010 when outgoing governor Jon Corzine signed the bill on his last day in office. Unfortunately his successor, noted prohibitionist Chris Christie, did everything he could to stifle the program and ensure that it was viewed as a virtual failure. The state did grant six vertically integrated licenses, but the businesses stagnated under a highly restrictive program with no expansion during Christie’s tenure in office.

All of that changed early this year when New Jersey elected a new governor, Phil Murphy, who had campaigned on legalization as a major plank in his platform. He entered the governorship with strong support on this issue from powerful members of the New Jersey Legislature like Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Nicholas Scutari, who had been working behind the scenes to ensure that the Legislature was ready to expand the medical marijuana program and pass legalization once Chris Christie and his guaranteed veto had vacated the governor’s office.

Since Gov. Murphy was sworn in earlier this year the state has already seen meaningful growth in its medical program, and attracted significant attention, both from the media and cannabis companies looking to enter the state. The administration quickly expanded the list of qualifying conditions, leading to roughly 10,000 new patients in the first half of 2018, nearly as many patients as joined the program in all of 2017.

To meet the rapidly increasing patient demand, Gov. Murphy’s Department of Health announced that they would award six new “emergency” vertically integrated licenses this year. The application process wrapped up in September, with 145 applications for these six licenses, demonstrating how attractive New Jersey has become to cannabis companies. We’ve already seen a national operator, Acreage, enter the market through the acquisition—with a purchase price rumored to be upwards of $40 million—of one of the original six licenses.

Later this year, the New Jersey Legislature is expected to take up legislation that would further expand the medical marijuana program, with an expectation that even more licenses will be granted by early 2019. More significantly, the Legislature is expected to vote on, and likely pass, a bill that would make New Jersey the first state legislature in the country to fully legalize cannabis for adults with a regulated market. Those who have managed to get into the medical market in New Jersey early will have a significant first mover advantage in this transition to adult use.

Illinois
Receiving far less attention than New Jersey is the largest state in the Midwest: Illinois. Yet the two states look remarkably similar in their trajectories towards a legal and regulated cannabis market. Illinois has one of the more restrictive medical marijuana laws in the country, signed into law in 2013 by then-Democratic governor Pat Quinn, who lost his reelection bid to Republican Bruce Rauner while license applications were pending in November 2014. Like New Jersey, the GOP governor in an otherwise deep blue state has done nearly everything in his power to undermine the program, refusing to add chronic pain as a qualifying condition against the advice of his own medical marijuana commission. This has left Illinois largely overlooked as a major player in the industry to date.

But much like New Jersey, Illinois is on the precipice of a major change. Much like Chris Christie in the waning days of his administration, Gov. Rauner is deeply unpopular in Illinois, and trailing in the polls in his November reelection bid. Just like Phil Murphy campaigned on a promise to legalize marijuana, the Democratic candidate for governor of Illinois, J.B. Pritzker, has also made legalization a key component of his campaign. And just like in New Jersey, the Illinois Legislature has been preparing itself for a legalization bill, with the effort being led by powerful state senator Heather Steans, who has had a full-time staffer working on legalization for over a year. With Michigan expected to be the first Midwestern state to legalize marijuana for adults through a ballot initiative this November, it will only add political cover to Illinois legislators who will not want to lose out on cannabis tax revenue to a rival state in the region.

The state has already taken steps to expand its medical marijuana program, passing a bill this year designed to curb the opiate crisis that expanded medical marijuana to anyone with a condition for which an opiate could be prescribed. Even staunch prohibitionist Bruce Rauner could not veto such a bill and be seen as an opponent of an effort to curb opiate addiction in an election year. But more expansion is expected after November should Pritzker take over the governor’s office as expected.

Capital markets and national cannabis companies have already taken notice. (Full disclosure: My company, 4Front, operates a dispensary under its Mission brand in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood.) Just recently, national player MedMen purchased the Seven Point dispensary in Chicago, while other deals involving national players are reportedly in the works. In a state of nearly 13 million people and only 60 retail licenses and 19 cultivation licenses, the values of these licenses are expected to rival those we’ve seen in Florida and New York, making them some of the most valuable in the country. While expansion of the number of licenses is expected with legalization, the current license holders are expected to be given a significant head start and first-mover advantage as the program grows.

Over the next couple of years, New Jersey and Illinois will be closely watched by industry insiders and operators alike. Not only will they provide valuable business opportunities themselves, they could usher in further reform in their regions. We’ve already seen significant movement towards legalization in New York from previously skeptical governor Andrew Cuomo, spurred largely by New Jersey’s move to legalize just next door. Meanwhile Illinois serves as the de facto capital of the Midwest. Its passage of legalization through the legislature, coupled with Michigan voters doing the same this November, could lead to other states in the region—for example, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Minnesota—adopting their own legalization laws in the years to come.

 

[Baron23]

CEO pleads for Trump to help America's marijuana industry as Canada gets a head start on legal weed

A full-page advertisement in Tuesday's print edition of The Wall Street Journal sounded a siren of alarm to an audience of one. "Dear Mr. President, We need your help!" the open letter to President Donald Trump began. "Canada is threatening to deprive American farmers, workers and businesses from the prosperity that rightly belongs within our borders."

That language could have applied to the U.S. and Canada's recent tug of war over the details of an updated trade pact. But CEO Derek Peterson, who authored the ad, was warning Trump of a different threat entirely: Canada's burgeoning pot market.

Derek Peterson, chief executive officer of Terra Tech Corp., speaks during the Cannabis World Congress & Business Expo in Los Angeles, California, U.S., on Thursday, Sept. 14, 2017.

On Wednesday, Canada became the second country in the world to legalize marijuana, the fulfillment of a promise made by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2015. But in the run-up to Oct. 17, Canadian cannabis companies have already struck multibillion-dollar partnerships and joined major U.S. stock indexes, while marijuana remains illegal at the federal level in the U.S.

Entrepreneurs like Peterson, whose company Terra Tech operates six stores in California and Nevada, say America must either catch up quick — or let its nascent cannabis market wither. "If we wait two years, we're going to be way behind the eight ball here," he told CNBC in an interview.

Keeping up with the Canadians
Peterson, a Wall Street alumnus, told CNBC that he wants to veer the conversation toward capital markets. "I think we've all done enough to start that national discussion around the legitimacy of the industry," he said. Peterson frames his company's ad in the Journal as an appeal to a president with a heavy media diet and a mind for business.

"Part of it is trying to bend the president's ear. We know he pays attention to the mass media," said Peterson, whose other plans include advertising during "Fox & Friends," the Fox News morning show Trump is known to watch.

"But the other side of it is to make sure that we bring a level of consciousness to what's going on out there from an economic and capital markets perspective," he added. The urgent push to end prohibition for the economy's sake has its critics who worry about drug abuse.

"The industry absolutely wants to speed up, because they want to collect as much money in a short amount of time as possible," said Kevin Sabet, director of the University of Florida's Drug Policy Institute.

"We are in the midst of an opiate and addiction crisis right now and the idea that we would want to let addiction industries thrive and prosper makes no sense," he said, adding that today's marijuana is much stronger than the "Woodstock weed" of decades past.

Peterson's open letter spends little time extolling the health benefits of cannabis, but alludes to a handful of studies suggesting that opioid use has declined in states that legalized marijuana.

Terra Tech trades publicly on the OTCQX market, and Peterson says his business has grown exponentially since its founding in 2010 as the U.S. market expands even under prohibition. "There's been a significant paradigm shift around the industry," he said.

Yet federal marijuana criminalization prohibits American cannabis companies from listing on the New York Stock Exchange and the other Wall Street indexes. Instead, many of these U.S. companies have sought to expand on stock markets in Canada. Canadian cannabis companies, however, can earn a slot on major U.S. exchanges because they are not subject to the federal ban — and some have been making the most of that access.

Ontario-based medical marijuana producer Canopy Growth, for instance, recently struck a deal worth $4 billion at the time with Corona and Modelo maker Constellation Brands. The beverage giant now holds a 38 percent stake in Canopy, which is listed on the NYSE. Other Canadian pot stocks, such as Tilray and Cronos Group, trade on the Nasdaq.

What's more, Canadian companies with more money to invest have made inroads in U.S. capital acquisitions. Earlier this week, Canopy sent pot stocks higher after it announced a deal to buy Colorado-based hemp company ebbu for 25 million Canadian dollars ($19 million) in cash.

"The problem that we're under right now is partially growth, but partially who ends up owning all the pieces," Peterson said, adding that he is concerned about allowing the U.S. cannabis market to "end up in the control of foreign conglomerates."

Peterson said the ad cost $100,000 to run in the Journal's eastern region print edition, an area that encompasses about 20 states with an estimated daily circulation of nearly half a million papers. A spokesman for the newspaper declined comment, but referred CNBC to an advertising rate sheet that suggests a full page ad in black and white costs about $126,000.

Support grows
Politicians of both major parties, who for decades treated cannabis advocacy as taboo, have warmed to marijuana. But even in recent administrations, the clash between state and federal marijuana statutes has flared up.

The administrations of both Barack Obama and George W. Bush, for instance, oversaw numerous raids on pot producers, even in states where their operations had been legalized.

After decades of prohibition, California in 1996 became the first U.S. state to legalize cannabis for medical use. But by 2018, medical marijuana had been legalized in 30 states, and nine allow recreational pot use. Public support for marijuana has grown markedly in recent years. In a 2017 Gallup poll, a record-high 64 percent of Americans said they supported marijuana legalization.

"Lawmakers, while often slow to respond to public demand, are increasingly realizing the untenable position of maintaining a pro-criminalization stance," said Justin Strekal, political director for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML.

"As public support continues to grow, that is going to create a virtuous cycle of policy changes upwards," Strekal said. "Our biggest opponent right now is apathy and entrenched reefer madness ideology." So far, the Trump administration has sent mixed signals but it appears to be adopting a more liberal view on medical marijuana.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions' Justice Department in January rescinded a policy directing federal prosecutors not to target marijuana businesses that conducted themselves within state law.

But in April, Trump ditched Sessions' stance following an appeal by Republican Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado, who had vowed to block DOJ nominations in retaliation. Sessions was given no advance warning of the shift, news outlets reported.

Last week, staunch Trump ally Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., told Fox Business News that he has "been reassured that the president intends on keeping his campaign promise" to legalize medical marijuana across the country.

Meanwhile, lawmakers have introduced sweeping legislation to defang the ongoing federal prohibition. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., have proffered bills that would not only decriminalize marijuana but nullify some possession-related convictions and establish community funds.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., introduced his own legislation that has been co-sponsored by nine other senators. While Democrats in Congress still tend to be more outwardly supportive of marijuana decriminalization policies than Republicans, the gap appears to be narrowing.

Gardner, alongside Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., in June released a bipartisan bill prioritizing states' rights on marijuana. Rohrabacher helped introduced an amendment to an omnibus spending bill that protected medical marijuana recipients and became law in 2014. And GOP Rep. Thomas Garrett of Virginia pushed a bill that would effectively end marijuana prohibition at the federal level.

Many advocates and critics of a more liberal pot policy view the push for medical marijuana as a stepping stone toward the model adopted Wednesday by Canada.

Under that system, a plethora of cannabis products containing the psychoactive ingredient tetrahydrocannabinol will be legal to buy, sell, distribute and consume recreationally. As Canada legalizes, pot industry activists and business owners have their eyes set squarely on U.S. prohibition. "That's literally it," Peterson said when asked what was the biggest threat to his business.

For Sabet, however, prohibition is a bulwark against the drawbacks of an unfettered marijuana industry. "I'm not surprised that the industry is saying that they don't want to be missing out from Canada," Sabet said, "but frankly I think it's a good thing that they are missing out."

 

[Baron23]

Why Are Pelosi, House Democratic Leaders Such a Bummer on Legal Weed?
Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, and James Clyburn have no plan to take up pot legalization should they take back the House, leaving younger Dems shaking their heads.

If you’ve wondered why many of the younger progressives taking over the Democratic Party have accused Nancy Pelosi and her fellow septuagenarian top generals in the House of being out of touch with voters look no further than marijuana policy.

With marijuana now legal in one form or another in 31 states as well as the District of Columbia, and with polls repeatedly showing a whopping 62 percent of Americans supporting its outright legalization, many rank and file Democrats are growing increasingly frustrated that their top leaders in the House are promising no more than merely maintaining the status quo on pot policy if they recapture the lower chamber in November.

“I’ve supported these initiatives in my home state of California, so we’ll see what’s possible,” Pelosi responded at a recent press conference when asked if she has a plan to even bring marijuana legislation to the floor if she regains the title of speaker of the House.

Pressed on specifics, she pivoted to Trump who, over the protests from his prohibitionist Attorney General Jeff Sessions, has seemed to endorse allowing states to decide their own marijuana laws.

“I don’t know where the president is on any of this. So any decision about how we go forward would have to reflect where we can get the result,” Pelosi responded.

Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the number two House Democrat, likewise said he and Pelosi hadn’t even discussed how their party plans to deal with marijuana policy should Democrats retake the House next month.

“We haven’t talked about that. We’re focused on jobs. We’re focused on infrastructure,” Hoyer told reporters last month.

Related in Politics
Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC), the third highest ranking Democrat in the House, who has been discussed as the future first African-American Speaker of the House, all but dismissed the issue entirely.

“It’s not important to me,” Clyburn told me just off the House floor last month. “It’s not. It’s just not the thing I focus on. I’m trying to focus on trying to get people out of poverty, trying to get people housing. I’m not focused on that. That’s not important to me, OK?”

But even in Clyburn’s staunchly conservative home state of South Carolina tweaking drug laws has had a huge impact. Back in 2010 a bipartisan group of lawmakers came together and overhauled the state’s criminal justice system in part by no longer prioritizing non-violent drug offenders. In the next six years, according to PEW, the prison population dropped by 14 percent, the state saved $491 million and the crime rate fell by 16 percent.

While many sitting Democrats won’t bad-mouth Pelosi and her top generals on the record, their stances on marijuana starkly contrast to the either fear-filled or utterly dismissive positions held by those current Democratic leaders.

“You won’t get me to comment on anyone else,” Rep. Beto O’Rourke told The Daily Beast, after posing for pictures with tourists on the steps of the Capitol, before the House recessed until after the election. “I’ll just tell you, for me, ending the prohibition on marijuana is a top priority. It’s fundamental to criminal justice reform.”

As you’ve likely heard, the 46-year-old O’Rourke is mounting a serious challenge to Sen. Ted Cruz in Texas. Cruz and his campaign have, according to many observers, tried to race-bait O’Rourke and falsely attempted to portray him as wanting to turn America into Amsterdam.

Cruz is favored to win, because, it seems, Texas is still Texas.

But even if O’Rourke loses, he’s already emerged from this Senate street brawl as a national Democratic icon—raking in a record-breaking haul of $38 million in this last quarter of fundraising. And if he decides to launch a White House bid he’ll be bringing his pro-marijuana message with him. He he has no regrets about embracing marijuana normalization in his deep red state, because he knows his neighbors and he’s never been surprised that the issue resonates across all demographics.

“No, actually because I’ve lived there my whole life and folks—people got there well before the politicians did,” he said.

Unlike O’Rourke, a small, though growing, handful of pro-marijuana reform Republicans are willing to comment on Pelosi and her top general’s non-committal, even contemptuous, attitude toward allowing a vote on marijuana bills if Democrats regain the majority.

“Then they’re as irresponsible as the Republican leadership,” Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-FL) vented to The Daily Beast upon learning that Democratic leaders won’t promise a vote on marijuana if they regain control of the House. “It’s criminal justice. It’s small business. It’s an economic issue!”

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), who is suddenly locked in a shockingly close reelection battle, has claimed that Trump and Republicans will move on marijuana reform early next year if the GOP reclaims control of the House.

While he’s offered no proof that that’s the case, it’s isn’t lost on Democrats who want their party to own the issue.

“Part of the problem is not the candidates, it’s the people they hire as consultants or professional campaign managers. They are notoriously risk averse, and they don’t want to dive into new issues that they’d have to explore how to develop it.”
— Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR)
“Part of the problem is not the candidates, it’s the people they hire as consultants or professional campaign managers,” Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) told The Daily Beast on the phone last week. “They are notoriously risk-averse, and they don’t want to dive into new issues that they’d have to explore how to develop it.”

Over the past year, Blumenauer has been working behind the scenes feeding polling data on how popular marijuana is to more than 80 Democratic candidates. He’s also been hitting the pavement, or speaker platforms, nationwide trying to showcase how popular marijuana reform actually is outside the bubble of Washington.

He’s even thinking of hosting a boot camp next year for pollsters and consultants on how it’s actually a winning issue for the party.

This reticence from the old guard to attach the party to such a popular issue is filling many Democrats with disbelief.

“To me, this is such a no-brainer. It could bring the caucus together. It should be one of the first things we do. It’s a signal also to the Black Lives Matter,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) recently told The Daily Beast at the Capitol. “The low-hanging fruit is to decriminalize marijuana.”

Some Democratic candidates aren’t as smooth and polished, and they accuse any Democrats—whether they’re in the party’s leadership ranks or not—of being in bed with Big Pharma if they balk on marijuana reform.

“Why do you have to poll that garbage? We know for a fact these opioids have destroyed our communities,” surging West Virginia Democratic House candidate Richard Ojeda told The Daily Beast this week. “Right now our country is being turned into a mass grave of the thousands upon thousands of people that die every single year because of opioids that have been thrown at them like Tic Tacs.”

 

[Baron23]

Marijuana Support Grows: Two Out Of Three Americans Back Legalization, Gallup Says

Two-thirds of Americans now support legalizing marijuana, the highest percentage ever in Gallup's ongoing decades-long series of national polls on the topic.

The new survey released on Monday shows that U.S. adults back ending cannabis prohibition by a supermajority margin of 66 percent to 32 percent. That's more than a two-to-one ratio.

It is the third year in a row that the firm, which has been polling about marijuana for 49 years, has found a record-breaking increase in support.

When Gallup first polled Americans on legal marijuana in 1969, just 12 percent said they were in favor. As recently as 2005, barely a third of Americans were on board.

Last year, the survey pegged legalization's favorability at 64 percent. In addition to the two-point bump in support since then, opposition also decreased two percentage points from 2017's level of 34 percent.

GallupGallup

Support for legalization has spiked considerably in several key demographics over the past year. For example, there has been a nine-point increase among older Americans, with 59 percent of those aged 55 and over now saying it is time to end marijuana's criminalization.

And Republican support is rising as well, with 53 percent backing legal marijuana this year as compared to 51 percent in 2017, the first year the poll found a majority of GOP voters in favor.

GallupGallup

Just 45 percent of Republicans told Gallup this year that they oppose making cannabis legal, a four-point drop from 2017. Combined with the jump in those saying they favor the policy change, there was a net six-point swing in GOP attitudes toward marijuana legalization and away from prohibition over the past twelve months.

Legal marijuana support is also at an all-time-high among Democrats—75 percent—and independents, who are on board to the tune of 71 percent.

The poll also found that regional differences in attitudes about cannabis are starting to dissipate. People on the East Coast are now slightly more likely to back legal marijuana than those out West , with all areas of the country favoring the policy change at roughly the same rate—67 percent in the East and 65 percent in the each of the Midwest, South and West.

And there's no sign the year-over-year increase in support is slowing down.

"Like support for gay marriage—and in prior years, interracial marriage—support for marijuana legalization has generally only expanded, even if slowly, over the course of multiple decades—raising the question of where the ceiling in support might be," Gallup's Justin McCarthy wrote.

Indeed, support is huge among younger Americans, with 78 percent of those aged 18 to 34 calling for cannabis to be legal.

The survey was conducted between October 1 and 10, prior to Canada's cannabis legalization law going into effect last week.

Several other recent national polls have shown strong support for cannabis reform. Earlier this month the Pew Research Center, for example, found that 62 percent of Americans support ending marijuana prohibition.

The positive reports of legalization's favorability come as several U.S. states prepare to vote on cannabis measures in November.