Law The Cannabis Chronicles - Misc Cannabis News

[Baron23]

How the vocal anti-marijuana minority is sabotaging legal cannabis

On the eve of November 7, while the majority of Michigan voters celebrated the passage of Proposal 1 — the initiative to legalize adult-use marijuana — a dejected Scott Greenlee, the president of anti-cannabis organization Healthy and Productive Michigan, stood behind a podium and told his supporters via Facebook Live that their campaign against cannabis had failed. That they had lost, writes Andrew Memtook.

Yet he made it clear that his organization, which takes financial support from anti-weed holdout Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), would not give up on their fight. Even after a state legalizes cannabis, he impressed, the political, albeit antiquated, war on weed rages on.
As marijuana legalization sweeps the nation, Greenlee and his colleagues may seem like a losing minority, swimming upstream against the rapids. But if cannabis activists and business investors don't remain vigilant and prepared for those like Greenlee, they will find out the hard way how insidious and pervasive the anti-weed lobby really is.

At an October 2 meeting, the Milpitas City Council voted 3-2 in favor of an ordinance sanctioning 10 cannabis businesses in the small central Californian city. But less than two months later, the city began to move forward with a permanent ban.

This change resulted from a contingent of anti-cannabis advocates who vocalized their dismay with the October vote. They went to all the subsequent council meetings, declaring their opposition loud and clear. Many of these advocates even brought their children.
“You have them with children running around the lobby until 10 o'clock at night or later and a child saying to the council, 'Drugs are bad. My dog doesn't like them. Don't vote for marijuana,'” said Pamela Epstein from the cannabis business consulting company Green Wise Consulting, who attended Milpitas City Council Meetings. “[They're] systemically teaching a new generation to be afraid of something," she said.

Epstein and other cannabis activists in attendance were alarmed at how the "vocal minority" filled city council meetings and, at the eleventh hour, changed the decision of local government officials — ignoring the wish of Milpitas' majority (51.2 percent of the city's constituents), who didn’t feel the need to show up because they felt their voice had already been heard when the city council officials cast their vote, reflecting the will of the people. Per Milpitas City Council minutes, not much progress has been made in overturning the ban.

Similar strategies have been employed and successful in other Bay area communities, such as Mountain View, where an ordinance was changed even after hopeful cannabis entrepreneurs submitted applications and invested in storefront businesses. Ultimately, it was changed so that only three warehouse and delivery businesses could operate within the city. And so, currently, no cannabis storefronts are permitted to operate within Mountain View.
After the Milpitas city council meeting on November 20, anti-cannabis activist Frank Lee claimed victory on the blog StopPot.org: “We managed to convince them to reverse course."

And indeed, to successfully swim upstream against the inevitable tide of legal weed, is a victory. “They feel vindicated, they feel empowered, they've been successful,” Epstein said. “They've been successful around the state at not only stopping but also reverting progressive [cannabis] regulation. So we've got to get back as an industry to our advocacy roots because we are not yet at a point to enjoy the luxury of simply doing business.”

While Milpitas and Mountain View residents can still simply drive to neighboring communities like San Jose to purchase cannabis products, there is a growing concern throughout the state that voters who helped approve adult-use marijuana do not have legal access to it. These communities are often referred to as “pot deserts” — each defined as an area in California where residents have to drive at least 60 miles to find a licensed dispensary in order to legally buy marijuana.
Back in Michigan, adult-use cannabis business licenses aren't available yet, but Greenlee and Healthy and Productive Michigan are already preparing for when that happens by encouraging communities to shut the door on the marijuana industry. His goal is to make the entire state of Michigan a giant pot dessert.
In Michigan, similar to California, individual jurisdictions are able to opt-out of cannabis — essentially, banning adult-use marijuana businesses from operating within their community. Healthy and Productive Michigan acts as a service for Michigan communities looking to opt-out, and so far more than 500 jurisdictions (out of 1,773) have done so.

“We want to see every county say no to the business of marijuana because if that's the case then nobody's going to have access to marijuana,” Greenlee said.
He says he believes that marijuana is a hindrance to every community in the state and that most Michigan voters didn’t understand what they were saying “yes” to when they cast their ballots on November 6. Not only does he think that Michigan won't financially benefit from adult use marijuana (despite that other states have from their own legalization programs), but moreover he's committed to a strong anti-weed belief system founded in traditional Drug War rhetoric.

Another growing concern for the cannabis industry is the growing number of lawsuits.

Backed by the anti-marijuana group Safe Streets Alliance, Phillis Windy Hope Reilly and Michael P. Reilly filed a lawsuit in 2015 against a legal grow operation run by Alternative Holistic Healing in Colorado. The lawsuit alleged that the Reillys' property value decreased after Alternative Holistic Healing opened up nearby and led to a drop in their horseback riding business due to the smell of cannabis and the fact that marijuana is federally illegal.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ruled that the lawsuit could continue, on account of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) — which was initially put in place to go after the mafia. A nearby Holiday Inn also sued Alternative Holistic Healing, which ultimately settled the case and closed shop.
The success against Alternative Holistic Healing set an encouraging example for similar lawsuits. In Oregon, more than 40 businesses associated with the cannabis processing facility Oregon Candy Farm were sued by its neighbor, Laura Underwood and her lawyer Rachel McCart. Both have a history of opposing the cannabis industry, with McCart having filed her first racketeering lawsuit against a neighboring cannabis company in 2017, and Underwood having worked with the group Unwanted Pot Grows.

"We didn't want to settle. That was the main thing because if you settle, that incentivizes this behavior,” said Mason Walker, CEO of East Fork Cultivars, which was named in the lawsuit. “So going into it, my business partners and several of my friends that are also named defendants in this were like, 'We did not want to settle. Even if we have to pay a little bit extra to have [the case get] dismissed, we don't want to incentivize those bad behaviors.'"

But a dismissal doesn’t necessarily mean that anti-cannabis groups or individuals will regret their decision to sue.

“I don’t think it was a mistake. I'm not sure that the [anti-cannabis] advocacy groups behind the lawsuits necessarily believe they would win,” said Professor Sean O’Connor, an expert in cannabis law at George Mason University. “I think it was a pragmatic tool or a tactic to try to slow down the growth of cannabis companies.”
Local government officials that oppose marijuana have also tried their hand at filing lawsuits in order to keep legal marijuana out of neighboring communities.
Town officials in Saugus, Massachusetts, which has banned all marijuana businesses, are suing the neighboring city of Lynn and a hopeful entrepreneur, who's in the process of opening a cannabis business, Massachusetts Green Retail, on the border. While the business has a license to operate in Lynn, the lawsuit alleges that 10 inches of its retail space is technically in Saugus and that, therefore, the permit should be denied. Saugus also alleges that patrons of Massachusetts Green Retail will need to park within their city limits.

“This is their tactic to try to scare me and railroad me,” said Jordan Avery, the president and CEO of Massachusetts Green Retail. “I'm not going to let that happen. I'm excited to be a cannabis entrepreneur.”

Avery and his legal team do not believe that Saugus has a case, and he plans to proceed with opening his business anyway. At the same time, he does acknowledge that the lawsuit is an expensive strain on his business venture — one that he has to dig into his own capital to fight. Avery says it helps that Lynn is being supportive of Massachusetts Green Retail and has not backed down. The mayor even signed a host agreement (a document that a marijuana business needs in Massachusetts in order to operate) with Avery after the lawsuit had already been filed.

Since Avery announced at the beginning of this year that he was going to open a cannabis business, he’s also been harassed. For months, people were leaving signs in front of his shop that said things like “Save Saugus. No pot shops.” But recently, the persecution escalated.
After a call from his landlord, Avery rushed to his Massachusetts Green Retail shop to see that his storefront had been broken into and vandalized. A noose holding a knife was hung from the ceiling and anti-Semitic slurs were spray-painted on the walls. (The building owner is Jewish, while Avery, himself, is also converting to the faith.)
“I was speechless and irritated that this type of behavior is still happening," Avery said. “It was targeted at me.”

While violent, racist, and illegal actions aren’t something Greenlee would condone, he is open to bringing some of the lawsuits to Michigan that other anti-cannabis organizations have filed in other states.

“We've had all kinds of discussions with all kinds of law enforcement, from local levels to federal levels,” said Greenlee, who's a lawyer by trade. “We're aware that some other states have certainly gone down that path [of litigation]. We're not in a position right now to rule anything out. Yet, I can also tell you I don't have anything planned to do today. So we're aware of various legal options and various things that can be done.”

Southeastern and Midwestern states traditionally aren’t as progressive compared to Massachusetts, Colorado, California, and Oregon, which begs the question — will lawsuits and other politically driven tactics have more success in states like Michigan and Illinois than they have elsewhere?
“I would imagine as this goes on in the Midwest and the Southeast, we're going to see more pushback because there are more conservative populations there that are willing to try to fight,” said Hillary Bricken, a lawyer and writer for CannaLawBlog.

For now, Greenlee and other members of Healthy and Productive Michigan plan to push back against marijuana legalization by speaking to local communities and sharing anti-cannabis information. His anti-weed campaign not only reminds the audience that Michigan employers can still fire people who test positive for cannabis, but also spreads false information (like an op-ed by SAM's Kevin Sabet) about the safety or economic realities of legal marijuana.

If the cannabis industry isn’t prepared to keep fighting even after their state legalizes, then much of the progress toward ending prohibition could be mitigated.
“We need to be responsible in how we approach this and do so in a meaningful manner,” Epstein said. “There's no need to vilify the opposition. If they have concerns, let's address them. We've got analytics. We've got data. We've got the acknowledgment that the more you regulate, the less of the illicit market we have to contend with.”

 

[Baron23]

The $4 billion time bomb ticking away inside the biggest marijuana companies

Costly early cannabis acquisitions may weigh on future earnings as impairment charges

As pot-stock mania gripped North America in 2018, a bidding war struck up for a relatively small marijuana-growing property in a Toronto suburb.


The 9,000-square-foot facility was only capable of growing about C$12 million ($9 million) worth of pot in a year, but that didn’t seem to matter. Marijuana companies were surging in interest and market cap as Canada planned to legalize recreational pot sales, and companies that established at least one cultivation license were receiving beneficial treatment from Health Canada, which meant snagging the property and its accompanying license could lead to a legitimate growing business in more ways than one.


RavenQuest BioMed Inc. eventually “won” the bidding, agreeing to pay nearly C$30 million. But after Health Canada stopped expediting requests from license holders, RavenQuest was unable to capitalize on its purchase in the way it had thought. At the time, the company had a recorded value of C$27.7 million, or roughly C$1,385 per square foot, on its books, well more than the going rate for such facilities.


Months later, RavenQuest recorded a C$11.7 million impairment charge for the license at the end of the company’s fiscal year — a loss that was nearly 20 times more than its most recent quarterly revenue.


At the premier pot companies, the losses could be much larger and more important. Similar acquisitions played out across the cannabis industry, and the claimed value of those purchases now sits on cannabis companies’ books like a ticking time bomb. The six largest licensed cannabis producers in Canada have recorded more than $4 billion in goodwill — the amount allocated to certain acquisitions beyond the value of their physical assets — risking large and potentially punishing write-downs in the future.


In some cases, it doesn’t even sit on the books that long. Tilt Holdings Inc. removed $500 million from its books late last year, less than 30 days after it created the goodwill, the byproduct of a Byzantine transaction that rolled up four seemingly unrelated companies into a single entity. The Frankenstein’s monster of a company later justified the value this way: Shareholders that bought into the reverse takeover were willing to overpay for the freshly minted stock because of the opportunity and overheated environment.



Don’t miss: How a freshly grown cannabis company managed to lose $500 million in less than a month


Of the world’s largest marijuana companies, Aurora Cannabis Inc. has the most accumulated non-cash value on its balance sheet. It accumulated C$2.11 billion from its acquisition of Medreleaf, which closed in July 2018; C$712.1 million from its purchase of Cannimed Theraputics in March 2018; and C$137.2 million from the acquisition of ICC Labs in November 2018, according to its most recent public financial statements.

The world’s largest pot company by market value, Canopy Growth Corp. , says it has C$1.54 billion of goodwill, according to its latest available financial statements. Since its last fiscal year, it has added $1.23 billion from acquisitions, including C$539.3 million from its purchase of Hiku and C$327 million from the acquisition of Ebbu. Prior to its last fiscal year, Canopy Growth previously added C$207.1 million in goodwill from its Mettrum acquisition in fiscal 2017.

Canopy Growth’s acquisition of Mettrum Health Corp. values the license at C$1,100 per square foot, or C$88.2 million overall, roughly a quarter of the overall cost.


have made few or modest investments, and have a fraction of the goodwill Aurora and Canopy Growth have attached to their balance sheets.


Tilray carries the majority of its goodwill from the purchase of hemp product maker Manitoba Harvest.


It’s not always clear when a company will be forced to erase the value through a finance-damaging writedown. Aphria Inc. has nearly C$700 million of goodwill on its books, and CIBC World Markets analyst John Zamparo wrote ahead of Aphria’s quarterly earnings that he expected the company to make a large writedown. Based on the company’s acquisition of a European company called Nuuvera, Zamparo wrote there was a “real risk (albeit of unknown probability)” of a large write down of assets Aphria bought in January 2018, near peak value for the sector.


The Sniff Test: Aphria’s $70 million cash windfall is a product of its still-unexplained past


Aphria did not write down goodwill in the earnings it released last week, but the company has dumped a large amount of value into the intangible assets portion of its balance sheet, separate from goodwill and reserved for things such as patents, contracts, brand names and the various licenses associated with growing and selling pot. The value of licenses are especially hard to gauge, but of more than a dozen transactions scrutinized by MarketWatch, Aphria’s roughly $200 million acquisition of Broken Coast yielded the highest license value per square foot: C$1,400, nearly 3% of the entire transaction.


Tilray reported earnings Tuesday after the closing bell and Canopy Growth is expected to report late Wednesday, with its conference call Thursday before the market opens. Hexo reported its fiscal third quarter in June and Aurora Cannabis has not yet said when it will release its June-quarter earnings. Cronos Group reported last week.

 

[Baron23]

Well, that's one way to have your cake and eat it too. Sort of like Cuomo and NY full rec. Shifting during an election cycle to support full rec MJ, then basically doing nothing to push it through, got him reelected at no risk. I truly hold politicians in utter contempt.

GOP Senator Keeps Endorsing Medical Marijuana But Hasn’t Sponsored A Single Cannabis Bill

A Republican senator again voiced support for medical marijuana but, since he took office in January, he’s declined to sponsor or cosponsor any legislation that would provide patients with access to it.

“I believe when it comes to medical marijuana, there are too many good reasons why you need to start making that legal for that purpose,” Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN) told WTWO on Tuesday.

Braun said that he feels medical cannabis legalization is “going to cascade through all states more quickly than not.”

But so far, the senator hasn’t taken legislative action to bolster that movement, despite past statements on the campaign trail in which he stood out among his GOP primary opponents in his support for medical marijuana. He said in debates last year that medical cannabis is about “free markets and freedom of choice” for patients and that “if a state wants to go to medical marijuana, it ought to be their prerogative” to do so.

Several bills have been filed this Congress that would improve access to cannabis for patients, including more modest legislation that would simply promote scientific research into the therapeutic potential of marijuana.

Marijuana Moment reached out to Braun’s office to inquire about whether the senator planned to introduced a medical cannabis bill or sign on to any existing piece of legislation but a representative did not respond by the time of publication.

On adult-use legalization, the senator was less committal in the new interview, stating that “I still think that’s going to be up to the next generation whether all states will end up going there.”

 

[Baron23]

Top FDA Official Slams Federal Drug Scheduling System For Blocking CBD Research

The federal drug scheduling system inhibited research into CBD that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is now scrambling to conduct following the legalization of hemp and its derivatives, a top agency official said on Tuesday.

Speaking at the National Industrial Hemp Council’s 2019 Hemp Business Summit, FDA Principal Associate Commissioner for Policy Lowell Schiller gave an extensive overview of the agency’s role in regulating cannabis products, repeatedly stressing that FDA is “excited” about cannabidiol’s potential.

That said, Schiller said FDA retains regulatory authority over hemp-derived products and it remains illegal to introduce CBD in the food supply or as dietary supplements unless the agency develops alternative rules, which it is actively exploring. Because CBD exists as an FDA-approved epilepsy drug, Epidiolex, creating a regulatory framework is more complicated.

He also talked about other potential medical benefits of CBD and how the federal ban on hemp and its compounds, which was lifted under a provision of the 2018 Farm Bill that President Donald Trump signed in December, restricted research.

“There’s still a lot we don’t know about the potential therapeutic benefits of CBD, but we’re excited about the possibility that new therapeutic uses of CBD might be demonstrated to be safe and effective,” Schiller said, according to his remarks as prepared for delivery. “The last thing we want to do is to discourage that research, and potentially stunt our knowledge of potential uses of CBD. So we need to be thoughtful in our approach.”

“One thing we realized very early on in evaluating these questions is that there was still far too much we didn’t know about CBD, and about the implications of putting CBD in foods, dietary supplements, and cosmetics,” he said. “This is part of the legacy of almost all CBD being a Schedule I controlled substance until late last year.”

“It was difficult to research, and it hasn’t been studied nearly as much as we would like.”

Schiller said that more studies are needed to determine potential risks associated with consuming large quantities of CBD, interactions with other drugs, using the substance while pregnant and long-term consumption. Resolving those questions will “help to inform our path forward.”

That’s why, he said, FDA is “focusing on a different CBD: Collect Better Data.”

“We want to learn as much as we can, as quickly as we can, to support informed and efficient decision making. If there are data or studies that are relevant to the safety of particular uses of CBD, we want to see them. And if there are gaps in our knowledge, we want to understand how big those gaps are and what can be done—by us and by others—to start filling them.”

Those gaps in knowledge are partially due to the federal drug scheduling system, which has faced bipartisan criticism for hampering research initiatives. The director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse acknowledged in April that continuing to classify drugs like marijuana as Schedule I makes it “very difficult” to research.

But as FDA works to make up for lost time, it has pledged to engage in a transparent rulemaking process that takes into account what Congress and industry stakeholders have called for—namely a regulatory scheme under which hemp and CBD can be lawfully marketed without excessive interference.

FDA said it is speeding up its process to develop regulations and that it plans to release a report on its progress in the fall.

“In closing, I want to reiterate how excited we are about the potential uses of CBD and other hemp and hemp-derived products,” Schiller said. “The hemp industry has come an incredible distance in an incredibly short period of time. And in some cases, the enthusiasm and the commercial appeal have outpaced the scientific research. The science needs to catch up.”

He also told the hemp crowd that as FDA works on its end, “we need your help.”

“As this industry matures, it needs to start taking on more responsibilities—for the safety of consumers, and for the future development of an industry that can meet the same requirements as apply to other industries we regulate,” he said. “We look forward to working together as this industry continues to mature.”

U.S. Department of Agriculture Undersecretary Greg Ibach also spoke at the hemp conference on Tuesday.

 

[Baron23]

American Bar Association Urges Congress To Let States Set Their Own Marijuana Policies

The American Bar Association (ABA) adopted a resolution on Monday that calls on Congress to allow states to set their own marijuana policies and recommends rescheduling or descheduling cannabis under federal law.

Members of the ABA House of Delegates approved the measure at the organization’s annual meeting in San Francisco and, according to the ABA Journal, it was broadly supported—passing “without audible opposition”—even after proponents waived their time to speak.

Though ABA specified that it was not taking a position on marijuana legalization generally, it recognized that conflicting federal and state cannabis policies are untenable and have created complications for cannabis businesses operating in compliance with state law. That includes a lack of access to financial services that lead such companies to operate on a largely cash basis, making them targets for crime.

The resolution states that ABA “urges Congress to enact legislation to exempt from the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) any production, distribution, possession, or use of marijuana carried out in compliance with state laws.”

ABA, an association established in 1878 that now touts 411,000 members, also wants Congress to “enact legislation to remove marijuana from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act,” which could involve placing it in a less restrictive category or removing it from the list of federally controlled substances altogether.

Finally, the resolution recommends that Congress pass legislation to “encourage scientific research into the efficacy, dose, routes of administration, or side effects of commonly used and commercially available cannabis products in the United States.”

A report attached to the measure provides context on state-level legalization efforts, the history of federal prohibition and the “resulting regulatory quagmire.”

“There is an obvious tension between marijuana’s Schedule I status – which prohibits marijuana in virtually all circumstances—and state regulatory reforms—which increasingly authorize marijuana for at least some purposes,” ABA wrote. “While state and federal law often diverge—on everything from environmental to workplace laws—marijuana policy is the only area where the states regulate and tax conduct the federal government nearly universally prohibits.”

The temporary protections that lawmakers have been able to secure for medical cannabis states and guidance memos from the Justice Department are not enough to relieve the regulatory tension produced by federal prohibition, ABA argued. While the House approved a budget rider that would extend protections to adult-use programs, it’s not clear how that will fare in the Senate—and even if it passes, it must be annually renewed, creating uncertainty.

More fundamentally, however, because the spending riders operate only as a restraint on Justice Department action, they have not prevented other parties from using federal law against state-compliant marijuana businesses and users.

ABA listed various problems that these businesses face under the current regulatory framework: a lack of access to banking services, “unusually high federal taxes,” no federal protection for their trademarks and an increased number of private lawsuits.

“No one should be satisfied with the regulatory quagmire that has resulted from the unresolved tension between state reforms and federal law.”

The report goes on to describe how its recommendations would help resolve some of these issues.

Passing legislation such as the Strengthening the Tenth Amendment Through Entrusting States (STATES) Act would mean “marijuana businesses could obtain banking and legal services, deduct their reasonable business expenses when computing their federal tax liability, obtain federal protection for their trademarks, avoid civil RICO liability, and so on.”

What’s more, Congress could attach provisions to such legislation that would establish a basic federal framework for state cannabis programs by “incentivizing states to adopt and maintain careful controls on marijuana activities,” including age restrictions for adult-use programs.

But creating an exemption for legal cannabis states under the CSA wouldn’t fix all of the problems that federal prohibition is created, which is why ABA also made a scheduling recommendation.

It said that knowledge about marijuana’s risks and benefits has evolved in the years since the drug was placed in Schedule I of the CSA and that it no longer made sense to schedule cannabis in the same category as substances that are decidedly more dangerous. Loosening federal restrictions by rescheduling it could help, but “Congress could even choose to remove marijuana from the CSA altogether, in the same way it exempted alcoholic beverages and tobacco from the statute’s coverage in the first instance,” ABA wrote.

The final part of the resolution discusses the need to support research into cannabis. One area that could be quickly improved is in the sourcing of research-grade marijuana. ABA noted that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) announced in 2016 that it is accepting applications for additional cannabis manufacturers, which could bolster research, for example. Coincidentally, ABA’s resolution on the topic was approved exactly three years after DEA made that announcement, which the agency still has yet to act on.

The measure “urges Congress to actively support scientific research on marijuana,” ABA wrote. “As greater scientific knowledge of the benefits and harms of marijuana develops, Congress and the states can work together to ensure that the benefits of marijuana can be realized while the harms of the drug are properly addressed. Encouraging careful scientific study of marijuana will be beneficial regardless of the direction of marijuana law reform in the future.”

“You can’t do massive blind studies because everyone who does it is afraid they’ll get prosecuted,” Stephen Saltzburg, who moved the resolution, told ABA Journal. “We should have that research. We ought not to have states and [the federal government] flying blind.”

 

[momofthegoons]

Marijuana legalization can literally raise your home’s property value

Home is where the stoner is. If it’s not, maybe it should be, according to a new report that finds homeowners in states with recreational marijuana laws on the books are enjoying higher property values than those living in areas of prohibition. It’s just another sign that the business of growing and selling weed is not diminishing the pursuit for the American dream but rather providing more opportunities to live it.

A recent study from the folks at Clever Real Estate finds that property values in legal pot states are worth $6,000 more than in places where possession of the herb means living in a jail cell. This conclusion was made after analyzing data provided by the popular real estate website Zillow.

Researchers found that people who owned home in spots with legal marijuana experienced an increase of $6,337 in their property values between 2017 to 2019. This appreciation was actually more significant in those places where retail marijuana dispensaries were easily accessible. The study finds that these areas saw an increase of almost $23,000 over the past five years.

“States that legalize recreational cannabis see an immediate bump in home values following legalization, even without retail dispensaries opening up,” the report reads.
It was once believed that marijuana legalization would cause a deterioration in property values. Back before the first states moved to establish a taxed and regulated system on the drug back in 2012, there were concerns that legalization would open those areas open to less than desirable characters are sink the investments of upstanding citizens for years to come.

But the latest report seems to indicate that the complete opposite is happening—that communities and the homeowners that built them and welcoming more positives, which is translating to all good things in terms of property value. This is especially true for major cities where consumers are able to find legal weed as easy as other inebriating necessities of life in this day and age.

“The first two states to legalize recreational cannabis, Colorado and Washington, enjoyed the biggest increases of all since changing legislation to allow adult use cannabis sales and consumption in 2012,” according to the report.

Denver, in particular, has seen a significant boost.

“Since Denver retail dispensaries opened their doors on January 1, 2014, residential property values have increased 67.8%, the most significant growth in over two decades.”

Over the years, there have been reports of increasing crime rates in states that have legalized the leaf, yet there isn’t really any hard data that suggests this uptick in insanity is attributed solely to marijuana legalization. Furthermore, many state officials have said they are pleased by the results that legalization has had in their neck of the woods. So, without a doubt, “real estate investors can find blazing housing markets in cities where recreational cannabis is legalized,” the report finds.

 

[momofthegoons]

Former Detroit Lions players announce partnership with Harvard to study marijuana

Former Detroit Lions football players Calvin Johnson and Robert Sims are expanding their emerging cannabis enterprise into the field of medicine.

The pair announced an agreement Thursday with the International Phytomedicines and Medical Cannabis Institute at Harvard University, which is researching the benefits of medical marijuana and looking at the best ways to deliver cannabis-based medicines to cancer cells in patients.

The partnership, which also will look at the benefits of treating Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or CTE, a neurodegenerative disease caused by repeated blows to the head, with cannabis will help normalize the cannabis industry, Johnson said.

“With the stigma associated with this industry, a lot of my family, including my mother, looked at me like ‘Have you lost your mind?’ ” he said during the Cannabis Capital Conference in Detroit, sponsored by the financial news website Benzinga. “But when you all of a sudden add that we have a partnership with Harvard because we’re trying to find the best medicine, that changes a lot of minds.”


The institute was launched in May with a goal of researching and increasing access to medicinal plants for global health. It came about after the World Health Organization reported that up to 80% of the world’s population uses medicinal plants as remedies for a variety of illnesses.

Former Detroit Lions' football players Calvin Johnson and Robert Sims talking to a crowd at the Cannabis Capital Conference in Toronto. The two gridiron stars are planning on opening medical marijuana grow operations, processing facilities and dispensaries. The conference was sponsored by Benzinga, a Detroit-based financial news company. (Photo: Kathleen Gray)

Johnson, Sims and teammate Jason Strayhorn also participated in the launch during the Harvard Global Health Catalyst summit in Boston, where they talked about the benefits of cannabis to treat both physical and mental health ailments, with an emphasis on the weekly beating that football players endure on the gridiron.

“We’re actually going to be able to do clinical trials on CTE and with pain management,” Sims said. “Very quickly we went from being washed up athletes and very quickly turned to something that will really help people.”


The pair said it’s especially rewarding to get into the business now because they can contribute product for the research and help athletes before they’re totally debilitated by the game.

“From our point of view, 99% of football players have some form of CTE,” Sims said. “It’s a big deal because we can now represent a group of players who are alive and fighting for a treatment for themselves.”

The players, who started a house-flipping business at the end of their football careers, saw the possibilities in the legal weed business when they worked on a house in the “green zone” of Lansing, where several dispensaries had popped up.

They now are preparing to open a grow facility in the next couple of weeks in Webberville and have plans for medical marijuana dispensaries in Niles, Lansing and Kawkawlin.

It hasn’t been an easy journey for the athletes. Their first try for a license died because of an unpaid traffic ticket in Atlanta, for Johnson and issues with a rental property in Dearborn for Sims. But, operating under the brand name of Primative, the players have brought in additional partners and re-applied for a license and have been successful.

“That hurt, we all hurt on that day,” Johnson said of the day when they were denied a business license from the state. “If there was a low day in the last year for us, that was it. All the time and money we put forth, it was tragic. But we found some great legal advice and partners and found a solution.”

The pair are used to difficult challenges in both the marijuana and football businesses.

“There have been some bumps in the roads,” Sims said. “But, we’re used to those bumps, playing for the Lions.”

 

[Baron23]

Federal Health Agency Releases List Of Marijuana Research Priorities


In one of the latest signs that the federal government is recognizing the reality of the marijuana legalization movement’s continued success, a top health agency released an extensive list of cannabis-related research objectives it hopes to fund.

The notice, published on Wednesday, notes the rapid evolution of marijuana policies in the U.S. and globally, which is “far outpacing the knowledge needed to determine and minimize the public health impacts of these changes.”

“A growing number of states have loosened restrictions on cannabis, including those on sales and use, by passing medical marijuana laws or by making cannabis legal for adult recreational use, and in some cases, states have done both,” the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) wrote.
It also referenced a 2018 report from a cannabis policy working group that was tasked with identifying “cannabis policy research areas with the greatest urgency and potential for impact.”

Evidently, there are quite a few areas that fit that description, as NIDA listed 13 research objectives of “programmatic interest.” And while the agency has previously called for studies into several areas that are featured on the notice, there are others that signal NIDA is evolving in its understanding of research needs as more states opt to legalize.

For example, NIDA is not simply focusing on providing grants to explore the health risks of cannabis use, it’s also interested in learning about “reasons for initiation and continued use of marijuana for therapeutic purposes” as well as investigating “how cannabis industry practices, including research on marketing, taxes, and prices, impact use and health outcomes.”

The agency also wants to fund studies that look at the differences in legal marijuana regulatory schemes in various jurisdictions to “understand which combinations or components minimize harm to public health.”

Other research goals NIDA described include exploring the impact of cannabis use during pregnancy and developing roadside testing instruments to identify THC impaired drivers as well as standards to measure marijuana dosing.

Here’s the full list of research objectives:
—Develop standards for measuring cannabis (including hemp and hemp product) dose, intoxication, and impairment.
—Enhance existing epidemiology research to study trends for cannabis use and CUD; including new products, patterns of use, and reasons for use in different populations.
—Characterize the composition/potency of cannabis, methods of administration, cannabis extracts/concentrates, and cannabis of varying constituents (e.g. cannabinoid or terpene content), as well as how those factors impact physical and mental health.
—Determine the physical and mental health antecedents of use, as well as outcomes of use.
—Explore the impact of polysubstance use on health outcomes, including interactions (substitution/complementation) with alcohol, tobacco, and prescription and nonprescription opioids.
—Examine reasons for initiation and continued use of marijuana for therapeutic purposes.
—Investigate the effects of different patterns of cannabis use on brain development, educational attainment, and transition to work and adult roles.
—Identify the effects of maternal cannabis consumption during pregnancy and breastfeeding.
—Develop effective roadside tests for cannabis impairment that can be practically deployed by law enforcement.
—Determine the prevalence of cannabis-involved vehicular crashes and other types of injury or property damage.
—Investigate how cannabis industry practices, including research on marketing, taxes, and prices, impact use and health outcomes (e.g. how different price points impact consumption patterns across different levels of use).
—Determine the impact of federal, state, and local marijuana policies and their implementation on use and health outcomes.
—Explore the heterogeneity of regulatory schemes (e.g. models for retail distribution of cannabis) to understand which combinations or components minimize harm to public health.

A number of federal health agencies have issued several notices for marijuana-related research opportunities in recent months. One that received particular attention came from NIDA in May, when it said applications were open for what is essentially a professional research-grade marijuana joint roller and analyst position.
While NIDA said that research isn’t keeping up with the rapid reform movement, its director also acknowledged in April that the federal drug scheduling system—which regards cannabis as a tightly restricted Schedule I drug—has inhibited such research by making it difficult for scientists to access marijuana.

 

[Baron23]

Women Lawmakers From Across U.S. Hold Marijuana Conference And Tour Dispensary

Thirty female state lawmakers from across the country are convening in Denver for a policy summit on marijuana issues this week.

The National Foundation for Women Legislators (NFWL) is hosting a Marijuana Policy Summit on Thursday and Friday, where attendees will hear about the evolution of cannabis laws, licensing and tax structures in the industry, the science of marijuana and public health and safety concerns, among other topics.

Participants will also have the opportunity to tour a cannabis dispensary to “see how the process works in person and have the ability to connect directly with those working in the industry,” according to the summit agenda.

NFWL is “hosting a Marijuana Policy Summit to address a critical state policy issue that is unfolding in real time in legislatures across the country,” the event site states. “By bringing together a group of 30 elected women who are considering legalization in their state or municipality, or in states where legalization has already been established, we will provide an opportunity to connect and learn from one another and experts from all facets of the industry.”


“This was my first time attending a NFWL event, and the Evolution of Marijuana Policy Summit provided so much valuable information to bring back to Georgia,” said Georgia Rep. Dar’shun Kendrick (D) said in a press release. “The knowledge gained from this summit will help Georgia’s legislators navigate this new cannabis regulatory world in terms of best practices, taxes and any number of issues. I certainly look forward to sharing what I learned with my colleagues at the State Capitol.”

Nine NFWL members who also serve in state legislatures, including the organization’s chair, are scheduled to speak. That includes Colorado Rep. Lois Landgraf (R), Hawaii Sen. Donna Kim (D), Tennessee Rep. Karen Camper (D) and Montana Rep. Kimberly Dudik (D), who is also running to be her state’s attorney general.

Other notable speakers include government relations staffers with Weedmaps, former Colorado Attorney General Stanley Garnett and New Jersey Cannabis Industry Association Executive Director Dara Servis.

This appears to be the first time that NFWL organized a summit that exclusively concerns marijuana issues. The organization held a conference in 2016 that included a cannabis-focused panel, but it was part of a broader meeting to discuss a wide range of policies.

Here are the titles and descriptions of the marijuana summit’s main panels:

Marijuana Policy Across the States: To open the program, this session will look at how marijuana policy has changed over the years in the state that legalized it first, how policy differs across the country, and what is coming next.


Overview of Cannabis and Commercial Cannabis Operations: This session will provide an overview of products and potency, as well as provide a summary of cannabis licensing categories.


Developing a New Industry & Managing Expectations: Tax Structure and Budget Forecasting: This session will discuss how states are taxing legalized recreational marijuana, unique revenue forecasting challenges, revenue trends, and budgeting best practices.


A Careful Look to the Future: This session will look at the public health implications of marijuana policy legalization, and how to prevent youth usage.


The History and Potential of Cannabis Usage: This session will provide a summarized history of human interaction with cannabis, look at the uses in fighting disease and managing symptoms, and what potential there is for the future.


Cannabis and Human Health – A Focus on CBD: This session will address the importance of clinical trials, and look at how the healthcare industry is working in the marijuana space across the complex policy pictures in the states.


The Importance of Public Safety: This session will look at how marijuana legalization in Colorado posed significant challenges for law enforcement, what the resulting unanticipated consequences it has had on crime and public safety, and lessons learned.


Developing Functioning State Policy – Overview of Key Issues: This session will look at the necessary policy checklist a state needs to ensure a solid foundation for the implementation of marijuana legalization including closing the illegal market, establishing local control, addressing consumer and patient home grow programs, and coordinating departments and agencies.

 

[momofthegoons]

The Cannabis Catch-Up: Troubling Signs for Legal Markets?

When Colorado and California each legalized cannabis, activists in both states thought it would extinguish an extensive illicit market.

They were wrong.

Seven years after passage of Amendment 64, Colorado is grappling with a black market whose scope astounds even veteran law enforcement officials.

“I’ve only been doing this for 25 years and I have never seen the black market as robust and as complicated and as expertly cultivated as this one right now,” George Brauchler, the district attorney in Colorado’s 18th Judicial District, told Community Radio for Northern Colorado.

It’s not just anecdotal. During a three-day raid in May, law enforcement seized more than 80,000 marijuana plants at 250 locations in eight counties across the state, Westword reported at the time. The combined number of plants made it the largest bust in Colorado’s history.

Officials point to a loophole in the state’s medical marijuana law that allowed patients to grow as many plants as their physician recommended. Thousands were allowed to grow up to 99 plants.

A recent law curtailed that to just 12, still a large amount when considering the high yields expertly cultivated plants can achieve.

California, meanwhile, is home to the biggest legal cannabis market in the world. But its illicit market is even bigger, the Los Angeles Times reports.

The state is expected to make $3.1 billion in legal sales this year, while consumers are expected to spend $8.7 billion on the black market.

Why? Taxes are high, and a large majority of cities and counties have banned cannabis shops, the Times reported.

“Unless the state acts to lower the taxes and lower the regulatory load, they are making the illicit market participants happy campers by keeping them in business,” Tom Adams, managing director and principal analyst for sales-tracking firm BDS Analytics, told the paper.

 

[Shredder]

It's simple, better weed and better prices will get the market share.

We don't need to shop in an apple store. Maybe yuppies in Aspen do, lol. A delivery from a dude in a old rusty van would be fine.

The legal business model is not working. And the answers are obvious. So of course nothing will change, lol.

 

[Madri-Gal]

The Cannabis Catch-Up: Troubling Signs for Legal Markets?

When Colorado and California each legalized cannabis, activists in both states thought it would extinguish an extensive illicit market.

They were wrong.

Seven years after passage of Amendment 64, Colorado is grappling with a black market whose scope astounds even veteran law enforcement officials.

“I’ve only been doing this for 25 years and I have never seen the black market as robust and as complicated and as expertly cultivated as this one right now,” George Brauchler, the district attorney in Colorado’s 18th Judicial District, told Community Radio for Northern Colorado.

It’s not just anecdotal. During a three-day raid in May, law enforcement seized more than 80,000 marijuana plants at 250 locations in eight counties across the state, Westword reported at the time. The combined number of plants made it the largest bust in Colorado’s history.

Officials point to a loophole in the state’s medical marijuana law that allowed patients to grow as many plants as their physician recommended. Thousands were allowed to grow up to 99 plants.

A recent law curtailed that to just 12, still a large amount when considering the high yields expertly cultivated plants can achieve.

California, meanwhile, is home to the biggest legal cannabis market in the world. But its illicit market is even bigger, the Los Angeles Times reports.

The state is expected to make $3.1 billion in legal sales this year, while consumers are expected to spend $8.7 billion on the black market.

Why? Taxes are high, and a large majority of cities and counties have banned cannabis shops, the Times reported.

“Unless the state acts to lower the taxes and lower the regulatory load, they are making the illicit market participants happy campers by keeping them in business,” Tom Adams, managing director and principal analyst for sales-tracking firm BDS Analytics, told the paper.

The taxes are crazy high, at least here in California. It's interesting the blame is being laid at the feet of medical patients, even though 80,000 plants from over 250 locations comes to many more than "up to 99 plants" . Obviously , the answer is to curtail medical growers, not figure out a solution where patients are protected. Twelve plants might sound like a lot, but not all of these will be "expertly cultivated". Some will be grown by patients learning to garden. Some might be males, and if you only get 12 plants you get seriously nudged into feminized seeds, or clones, or you lose half. This impacts who has the ability to make seeds. The problem is complicated, but the simple "solution" is to go after medical patients first thing. Lowering that grow limit had to be a priority. Lowering taxes will be the last thing considered.

 

[Baron23]

The Cannabis Catch-Up: Troubling Signs for Legal Markets?

When Colorado and California each legalized cannabis, activists in both states thought it would extinguish an extensive illicit market.

They were wrong.

Seven years after passage of Amendment 64, Colorado is grappling with a black market whose scope astounds even veteran law enforcement officials.

“I’ve only been doing this for 25 years and I have never seen the black market as robust and as complicated and as expertly cultivated as this one right now,” George Brauchler, the district attorney in Colorado’s 18th Judicial District, told Community Radio for Northern Colorado.

It’s not just anecdotal. During a three-day raid in May, law enforcement seized more than 80,000 marijuana plants at 250 locations in eight counties across the state, Westword reported at the time. The combined number of plants made it the largest bust in Colorado’s history.

Officials point to a loophole in the state’s medical marijuana law that allowed patients to grow as many plants as their physician recommended. Thousands were allowed to grow up to 99 plants.

A recent law curtailed that to just 12, still a large amount when considering the high yields expertly cultivated plants can achieve.

California, meanwhile, is home to the biggest legal cannabis market in the world. But its illicit market is even bigger, the Los Angeles Times reports.

The state is expected to make $3.1 billion in legal sales this year, while consumers are expected to spend $8.7 billion on the black market.

Why? Taxes are high, and a large majority of cities and counties have banned cannabis shops, the Times reported.

“Unless the state acts to lower the taxes and lower the regulatory load, they are making the illicit market participants happy campers by keeping them in business,” Tom Adams, managing director and principal analyst for sales-tracking firm BDS Analytics, told the paper.

Yes, CA government made a complete and utter hash of this through greed (taxes) bending over backward to balkanize the state and allow every little Podunk to in effect develop its own laws on MJ.

 

[CarolKing]

Barneys Department Store Is Betting on the Luxury World of Weed
Inside Barneys' posh cannabis store, The High End.
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Image credit: Courtesy of Barneys


August 15, 2019 2 min read
This story appears in the August 2019 issue of Green Entrepreneur. Subscribe »
Few among us are in the market for a $950 handblown-glass bong. Or a pair of $900 Balenciaga high-top sneakers. But if you’re someone who absolutely must have both, you’ll find them within 20 feet of each other on the fifth floor of Barneys New York in Beverly Hills.
The cannabis store-within-a-store is fittingly called The High End. It isn’t so much a dispensary as it is a luxury head shop offering the finest paraphernalia and CBD-infused beauty products. While The High End is exclusively in Beverly Hills for now, there are plans to expand to additional Barneys locations in legal-use states.
“Our brand is really about acknowledging cultural shifts and creating dialogues,” says Barneys creative director Matt Mazzucca. “There’s a lot of controversy about cannabis, and also a growing acceptance, so we wanted to find a way to tell an elevated story and bring it to life within our doors.”
Party Like a Rock Star
In the market for a gold-and-silver cannabis necklace? (Who isn’t?) The High End has you covered with this beauty by Carole Shashona, for a reasonable $20,500.

Too pricey? Then perhaps we can interest you in a cannabis-inspired bracelet for $7K or the silver joint ring for $1,600. Angular Dream pipes, made of amethyst and fluorite, from designer Jan Leslie, let you puff with panache.
RELATED: How This Brand Is Making Cannabis Feel Like a Luxury

And cloud-shaped, crystal water pipes (a.k.a. superfancy bongs) by Caleb Siemon for $950 give new meaning to the word high.

Luxe and Lit
The Roman-column-themed case is home to Devambez, a French purveyor of elegant paper products, including ultrathin, organic hemp rolling paper ($160 for a set of 10) and prerolled cones with watermark ($78).
RELATED: House of Saka Aims to Redefine Luxury With Cannabis-Infused Wine

A stylish, black lizard vape pen case with gold logo from Vianel goes for $40 a pop -- lizard not included.

And Beboe’s Gatsby-like art deco display showcases its social-dosing THC and CBD products.

Now are you really going to feel more buzzed using a more expensive array of accessories? I guess if you have more money than you know what to do with. I say spend more money on premium products to vaporize. I know some of you crazy kids buy $950 bongs.

 

[momofthegoons]

'I feel lucky, for real': How legalizing hemp accidentally helped marijuana suspects
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people accused of marijuana possession have seen their cases dismissed or put on hold thanks to new hemp laws.

Joan Wong for NBC News / Getty Images


Aug. 18, 2019, 4:47 AM EDT
By Jon Schuppe
Late on a Friday night in April 2018, Donte Chazz Williams drove from his home in southeast Houston to his girlfriend’s just outside the city. A block from her house, he coasted through a stop sign, drawing the attention of a Fort Bend County sheriff’s deputy.

The deputy pulled him over and said he smelled pot. Williams said he had a bit of it in the car, and, sure enough, the deputy found a small bag in the center console, according to police reports, Williams and his lawyer. The deputy arrested Williams and booked him into the local jail for possession of 2 grams of marijuana.

Williams, who was 22, posted bail the next day, but the misdemeanor drug case dragged on for more than a year as he and his lawyer negotiated his enrollment in a drug-education program. He didn’t complete the class, so when he was called before a judge two weeks ago, he worried he’d be sent back to jail.

Instead, prosecutors dropped the case, saying they could no longer prove that the pot was indeed pot.

“That’s crazy,” Williams recalled thinking. “It actually blew my mind.”

Williams thanked his lawyer. But he could also credit state and federal lawmakers, who, in a rush to expand America’s production of industrial hemp, unwittingly made it harder for law enforcement to prosecute people for possessing marijuana.

Texas prosecutors dropped pot charges against Donte Chazz Williams when they couldn't get the evidence tested.Courtesy of Donte Chazz Williams

With the passage of new hemp-legalization laws over the past eight months, crime labs across the country have suddenly found themselves unable to prove that a leafy green plant taken from someone’s car is marijuana, rather than hemp. Marijuana looks and smells like hemp but has more THC, the chemical that makes people high.
Without the technology to determine a plant’s THC level, labs can’t provide scientific evidence for use in court. Without that help, prosecutors have to send evidence to expensive private labs that can do the tests or postpone cases until local labs develop their own tests, a process that could take months.

Rather than deal with prohibitive costs or lengthy delays, prosecutors in several states, including Texas, Florida and Ohio, are dropping low-level pot cases altogether or declining to bring new ones. Police in those states are now unsure whether their age-old pretext for searching cars ─ the smell of pot ─ is still valid. Some have been told not to make any arrests for marijuana possession, although they can issue tickets and confiscate the suspected drugs for testing later.

There is no way to determine how many cases have been imperiled by the new laws, but they number in the hundreds, perhaps thousands, law enforcement officials say.
“This is a nationwide issue,” said Duffie Stone, president of the National District Attorneys Association and a prosecutor in South Carolina, where pending marijuana cases are piling up as crime labs scramble to obtain equipment to conduct the new testing. ”This problem will exist in just about every state you talk to.”

With the spread of efforts to decriminalize marijuana, these unintended consequences have made life easier for America’s pot smokers, particularly in states that haven’t passed laws making it legal to possess small amounts of weed. Some observers have described the hemp laws as de facto decriminalization, although lawmakers insist that’s not the case.

The confusion over hemp stems from the 2018 Farm Bill, passed by Congress in December, which made hemp a legal crop to be used in the production of textiles, fabrics, paper, food and health care goods made with cannabidiol, a nonintoxicating extract known as CBD. In order to distinguish hemp from marijuana, which remains illegal under federal law, Congress defined hemp as having less than 0.3 percent of THC. The Farm Bill left it to states to pass their own laws on cultivating hemp; 47 states have done so, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Most of those states adopted the 0.3 percent standard.

Crime labs were not prepared for the impact.

Hemp at a farm in Springfield, Colorado.P. Solomon Banda / AP file

Before hemp was legalized, all the labs usually had to do on pot cases was conduct a relatively cheap and quick series of tests that showed whether something came from a cannabis plant. They had ways of testing for the presence of THC, but didn’t typically need them.

Now, many will have to purchase new testing equipment, hire more staff, train staff on new testing methods and get the methods approved for use in court. Some say they are weeks away; others say they won’t be able to conduct the tests on a routine basis until next year. Some labs also expect their caseloads to increase significantly. And that’s just for plant-based marijuana cases, not edibles or vaping oils. Lab officials in Texas have estimated that the total cost there could run beyond $10 million. Private labs are charging $200 to $600 per test.

In Tennessee, the state Bureau of Investigation has asked prosecutors to be selective in the pot cases they choose to pursue, and to not submit evidence from misdemeanor pot cases until labs develop new testing procedures, said David Rausch, the bureau’s director. In Ohio, Attorney General Dave Yost announced a $50,000 fund to cover the costs for police sending evidence to private labs. Several counties in Georgia said they have stopped pursuing misdemeanor marijuana charges. In Florida, prosecutors in at least four judicial circuits have told police they won’t file marijuana cases without a lab test.

“If you want to have a hemp industry, there’s no way to get around this issue,” said Phil Archer, the state attorney in Florida’s 18th Judicial Circuit. He said he has not filed any marijuana cases since Florida’s hemp law went into effect July 1. “I would say a majority of circuits are handling it in same way.”

Mitch Stone, president of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said he has used the new testing requirement to successfully challenge searches and arrests, and has gotten little pushback. “State attorneys don’t want to be dragged into court by defense lawyers to defend a case where they can’t prove that their decisions were lawful,” Stone said.

Peter Stout, president of the Houston Forensic Science Center in Texas, said his agency has hundreds of felony-level marijuana cases waiting for testing that may not be available for several months. Until then, the local prosecutor, Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg, said she would not accept criminal charges for possession of less than 4 ounces of marijuana ─ but would consider pursuing more serious cases.

“Everyone is struggling here,” Stout said.

Some law enforcement officials have pushed forward with marijuana cases, through paraphernalia charges or other workarounds. That’s the path endorsed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican who accused prosecutors of misinterpreting the new hemp law. In a letter to the state’s district attorneys last month, Abbott said they didn’t need testing in every marijuana case, and could instead charge someone with failure to possess a certificate saying they were licensed to transport hemp.

The prosecutors, however, were not satisfied.

In Fort Bend County, District Attorney Brian Middleton maintained that prosecutors indeed needed testing for all cases, even for violations of the hemp-certificate provision.
Middleton also said he had decided to dismiss some pending marijuana cases to avoid lengthy delays. “Under the circumstances, we concluded that it was unfair and unethical to further prolong these particular cases,” Middleton said in a statement.

He could have been talking about Donte Chazz Williams.

By the time the Texas hemp law went into effect on June 10, Williams’ case was more than a year old, delayed by routine matters: postponed court dates, a slow evidence-collection process, and Williams’ attempts to get into a program that allowed defendants to have their charges dropped in exchange for taking a drug education class. During that time, Williams said, he lost his job as a forklift driver and was unable to pay the class fees.

He considered blowing off an Aug. 6 court date because he feared he’d be sent back to jail. He assumed he’d eventually get sentenced to several months of probation.
Williams knew nothing of the hemp law confusion until he showed up at the courthouse and his lawyer, Vik Vij, handed him a copy of prosecutors’ motion to dismiss the charges.

“Required lab testing unavailable at this time,” a prosecutor scrawled on the margin. (Although the new hemp law didn’t indicate whether it was retroactive, prosecutors in Fort Bend and in other parts of Texas are treating it as if it is.)

Prosecutors could refile the case once the testing becomes available, a Middleton spokesman said.

But Williams said he was happy to have another chance.

“I feel lucky, for real,” he said. “Now I don’t have to do anything but go find myself a job.”

 

[momofthegoons]

FBI Seeks Tips On Marijuana Industry Corruption

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is actively seeking tips on public corruption related to the marijuana industry, it announced on Thursday.

"States require licenses to grow and sell the drug—opening the possibility for public officials to become susceptible to bribes in exchange for those licenses," FBI Public Affairs Specialist Mollie Halpern said on a short podcast the bureau released. "The corruption is more prevalent in western states where the licensing is decentralized—meaning the level of corruption can span from the highest to the lowest level of public officials."

It is not known if any specific incident or ongoing investigation prompted the cannabis-focused episode of the FBI This Week podcast, though the bureau argued that as legalization spreads, "states should expect the corruption problem to increase."



In March, the Los Angeles Times published an article looking at several instances of alleged public corruption related to cannabis licensing in California. Such incidents include the case of a mayor pro tem who was charged with taking a bribe to fast-track approval for a marijuana business and a congressional staffer who was found guilty of accepting cash from an undercover FBI agent after pledging to defend a cannabis dispensary from being closed by local officials.

"We’ve seen in some states the price go as high as $500,000 for a license to sell marijuana. So, we see people willing to pay large amounts of money to get in to the industry," Supervisory Special Agent Regino Chavez said in the podcast.


NORML Executive Director Erik Altieri said he agrees that federal law enforcement has a role to play in stopping bad actors in the cannabis industry.

"As awkward as it feels to sort of side with the FBI, it is imperative that states ensure the licensing for cannabis businesses is an open and fair process," he said. "NORML believes that we need to lower barriers to entry in the emerging legal marijuana market so it allows for small consumer oriented businesses to thrive and provides support for equity programs that would let those who were most targeted by, and suffered under, our decades long failed war on marijuana to benefit from its now legal status."

"Cronyism, corruption, and corporate takeovers are not unavoidable side effects of legalizing marijuana and they should be rooted out immediately," he said.

Morgan Fox, media relations director for the National Cannabis Industry Association, said that while the FBI's call for tips "strikes me as a fishing trip" because marijuana-related public corruption doesn't appear to be an especially prevalent problem, he agreed with NORML's Altieri that regulatory changes are needed.

"An easy way to avoid corruption becoming an issue is to get rid of arbitrary license caps and lower the barriers of entry for the industry," Fox said. "Not only would this make it easier for small businesses and people from marginalized communities to enter the industry, but it stops licenses from being treated as limited commodities that are so valuable that people may be willing to obtain them through unethical means."

"Competition belongs in the market, not in the license application process," he said.

Follow title link for Twitter pod cast shown here in original article.

The just-over-one-minute segment ends with a plea for listeners who "suspect a dispensary is operating with an illegally obtained license, or suspect public corruption in the marijuana industry" to contact their local FBI field office.

 

[Baron23]

I hesitate to give too much credence to political predictions, but this seems to be a fairly reasonable analysis, to me.

Here's how shockingly low the odds of U.S. marijuana legalization really are

Americans support legalizing marijuana in record numbers. A Hill-HarrisX survey released in April found that a whopping 84% of respondents support the legalization of pot. Half were in favor only for legalizing medical cannabis, with the other half supportive of legalizing the recreational use of marijuana as well.
With this widespread support, you might assume that U.S. marijuana legalization is a shoo-in. Think again.
By my rough calculations, the odds of marijuana being legalized in the U.S. within the next few years is less than 1 in 300. That's right: The chances that you would flip a coin and have it land on heads eight times in a row are much better than the country legalizing pot anytime soon.

Kentucky reign
There's one primary obstacle to changing federal laws to allow legal marijuana. And that obstacle's name is Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives should have all the votes they need to pass legislation to, at minimum, federally recognize the rights of individual states to enforce their own cannabis laws. Sen. Cory Gardner (R.-Colo.) even thinks the votes exist in the U.S. Senate to pass similar legislation.
But any bill that comes before the Senate must first be allowed to do so by the Senate majority leader. Sen. McConnell currently holds that position. He has very little incentive to change federal marijuana laws. In fact, it could be a foolish political move for him to allow marijuana legalization legislation to be voted on by the full Senate.
The issue is that hemp farming is now a rapidly growing industry in Sen. McConnell's home state of Kentucky. He played a key role in getting the 2018 Farm Bill passed last year. The bill legalized hemp in the U.S. and created greater opportunities for Kentucky hemp farmers. Those opportunities could be jeopardized by the U.S. legalization of marijuana. Because of this, Sen. McConnell has shown zero interest in changing federal marijuana laws.
2020 vision
That leads to the obvious question: Will the Democrats regain the U.S. Senate in 2020, thereby booting Sen. McConnell from his position as majority leader? They could, but the odds of doing so appear to be daunting at this point.

Democrats need to flip seven seats to take control of the Senate. With the GOP defending 22 seats compared to only 12 for the Democrats, that might seem relatively easy. But it isn't.
The Cook Political Report, a respected independent nonpartisan newsletter, rates 18 of those Republican seats as either solid or likely to be held by the GOP. Only two Senate Republican seats up for grabs in 2020 are rated as toss-ups. In addition, the Cook Political Report also rates the Alabama seat currently held by the Democrats as a toss-up. One other GOP Senate seat in Maine is listed as leaning Republican.

Political observer Larry Sabato agrees with these three toss-up seats. However, he thinks that there are three other seats that lean Republican instead of being likely to be held by the GOP.
Let's assume that Sabato's perspective is right. That still leaves the Democrats needing to win all three toss-up seats (including the one current Democrat-held seat), flip the four states that only lean GOP right now, plus pick up another seat that's more firmly held by Republicans.
What are the odds of that happening? A 50% probability for the three toss-up seats makes sense. We'll be generous and give the Democrats a 49% chance of flipping the four Senate seats that lean Republican. And let's assume there's a 45% probability of the Democrats dislodging one current GOP senator who is in a seemingly safer race (which, again, is being generous).
If we calculate the probability of Democrats winning in all of these races, we arrive at a 0.32% chance of the GOP losing control of the Senate. In other words, the odds are 308-to-1 against it happening.
But wait a second. If the Democrats win the presidency, they only need 50 Senate seats to be the majority party because the vice president breaks any tie votes. However, the betting odds right now give President Trump a slight edge in winning reelection. This scenario actually lowers the probability that the Democrats could regain control of the Senate.
The Bernie factor
There's one other potential development for us to consider, though. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) stated recently that he'd use an executive order to legalize marijuana. No other Democrat presidential candidates have hinted they would take this approach.
What are the odds that Sen. Sanders will become president? Based on betting sites, he has at best a 10% chance of becoming the Democrat nominee and going on to beat President Trump. That's a lot better than the Democrats' probability of winning the Senate.
However, U.S. presidents can't legally use an executive order to reverse a law passed by Congress. That's basically what Sen. Sanders proposes doing. The Controlled Substances Act passed by Congress in 1970 and signed into law by then-President Richard Nixon made marijuana illegal at the federal level in the U.S. The chances that a federal court would overturn an executive order that attempted to directly go against a law duly passed by Congress would likely be very high.
What it means for investors
The bottom line for investors is don't buy a stock banking on U.S. marijuana legalization anytime soon.
For example, Canopy Growth's (NYSE:CGC) deal to acquire Acreage Holdings hinges on changes to federal marijuana laws. There are other reasons you might like Canopy Growth, but the odds appear to be stacked against the Acreage deal closing within the next few years.
This means that Canopy Growth and its peers could be limited to participating only in the U.S. hemp market rather than the huge cannabis market. As such, it could take longer for these companies to grow into their current valuations than some investors anticipate. Also, the relatively lower valuations of U.S.-based cannabis stocks such as Green Thumb Industries (OTC:GTBIF) and KushCo Holdings (OTC:KSHB) could remain below their Canadian counterparts for a while.
A longer path to federal legalization of marijuana probably won't dampen growth in the states that have legalized or will legalize medical cannabis or recreational pot, though. Remember, too, that even daunting odds can evaporate as conditions change. For now, though, the probability of U.S. marijuana legalization remains shockingly low despite the strong support among Americans.

 

[Baron23]

@momofthegoons - don't know if this really belongs here, if not, please feel free to move. But I think that a LOT of movement in legalization, vape device design, MJ products, etc is now morphing to more directly address the fastest growing group of MJ users....old farts! haha


Engaging the over 55 crowd in your retail cannabis business

According to Scientific American, cannabis use has increased in adults between ages 50 to 64 by over 60% since 2006. More surprisingly, adults over the age of 65, cannabis use has increased by 250%. While it may be surprising to some that your parents may be puffing without you even knowing it, if your marijuana retail operation isn’t working hard to engage the over 55 crowd, you can be seriously missing out on some profit and clients. Here are some ways that your marijuana retail store can engage in some intentional strategies to engage the over 55 crowd and unlock business growth:
Focus in on Seniors’ Medical Needs
While there isn’t a full data set that can explain the uses for cannabis in older people across the board, data like that from Health Canada, representing a country that recently legalized cannabis, revealed that about 2/3 of medical marijuana patients in the country are using marijuana for arthritis and joint pain. This is a common ailment as people age. In addition to arthritis, pain-associated ailments are common in older people, including more complicated diseases like fibromyalgia, which is getting a lot more attention in the cannabis world as it proves an effective solution for many. Spanning the medical and emotional, cannabis has been looked at in great detail for the relief of PTSD, which is something that older generations, including veterans and individuals who have experienced other types of trauma, have been promoting widely in the cannabis movement. Do your research and be empathetic to older generations by acknowledging common ailments and conditions the over 55 crowd may commonly suffer from and design your marketing strategy, cannabis education, and in-store information to appeal to those individuals.
Appeal to the Social Needs of Seniors
One of the benefits of cannabis that is being lauded to the over 55 crowd is the social, emotional and mental effects that cannabis can have on the elder’s brain, with Scientific American revealing that cannabis can actually potentially reverse the aging process in the brain. Cannabis is known to improve mood and increase feelings of sociability, especially with Sativa-dominant strains. In addition, creativity can get stimulated in a brain through cannabis, perhaps unlocking new ideas for hobbies and interests as people adjust to new realities post-retirement. Use your in-store space to hold special events that bring together cannabis and social events, targeted for the over 55 crowd. Paint nights, community talks, or socials that get people together to learn about the newest products in cannabis dispensaries are a great way to bring new faces into your marijuana retail space.
Targeted Cannabis Education
With marijuana retail dispensaries noticing an increase in older generations using cannabis, both for medicinal and recreational reasons, it’s important, and responsible, to ensure that you’re providing cannabis education for your clients. Take a page from the book of Farmacy in British Columbia in Canada, who has taken its over 55 crowd seriously by rolling out a full cannabis education program targeted to seniors that is accessible online and in store. It’s important that people in the over 55 crowd know that cannabis potency has crept up dramatically in the last few decades; the stuff they got back in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, likely won’t hold a candle to the materials they can purchase today. They need to be prepared for this and understand dosing and the effects of different strains. Chances are too, they’ll be wide-eyed when they see how far cannabis consumption technology and methods have come since the good ol’ days where it was usually only “grass” they could access. Cannabis education can take many forms from in-store speaking engagements to online resources, to having thoughtfully designed pamphlets, to the engagement that your budtenders have with the customer. Take every opportunity to ensure that your customer knows their stuff about cannabis, especially those who are trying it for the first time.
Appeal to Aesthetics
Farmacy, mentioned above, goes one step further in their strategy to engage the older crowd in their cannabis dispensary. By using a design that incorporates vintage photos and old apothecary style shelving and storage, it’s a space that is appealing to the demographic it aims to serve. They also fill the space with classic rock, which brings back good memories for those who lived through the music at the original time while inspiring new generations to enjoy classic rock in the throwback space. When you’re thinking about dispensary design, try to appeal to a broad audience, while placing special accents that will catch the eye of each type of customer.
Find the New Cannabis Consumer
The profile of the cannabis user is changing. It’s no longer about engaging stoners or people already involved in cannabis culture in your dispensary. The cannabis movement has expanded to include people of all ages, backgrounds, nationalities and political views, and there always new and innovative ways marijuana retail operations can engage niche audiences, such as the over 55 crowd.

 

[Baron23]

Poll: Most Americans say cannabis should be legalized

Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe that marijuana ought to be legalized nationwide, according to polling data compiled by Investor’s Business Daily and TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence.
Overall, 63 percent of respondents backed legalization – a percentage that is consistent with other recent polls. Seventy-five percent of self-identified Democrats endorsed legalization, as did a majority (66 percent) of Independent voters. A majority of Republicans did not support legalization.



Nearly one in four Americans said that “they or someone in their home had consumed cannabis for medical or recreational purposes over the past half-year.” Self-reported use was highest among those ages 25 to 44.

 

[Baron23]

President Trump: Is Marijuana Legalization a Key Weapon?

President Trump hasn’t shared his views on marijuana yet. However, the US 2020 election is heating up. Many Democratic candidates have chosen marijuana legalization as a political platform.



President Trump and the 2020 presidential election



Some of the candidates have shared their views on marijuana legalization. Recently, we discussed what Bernie Sanders said about marijuana. To learn more, read Bernie Sanders Tweets on Marijuana Legalization.

Other candidates want easier regulations for the cannabis industry. For example, Joe Biden wants to pass the SAFE Justice Act to decriminalize cannabis. To learn more, read Joe Biden Wants to Reform Cannabis Laws.

Will President Trump legalize marijuana?
Many people wonder what President Trump thinks about cannabis. He’s known to be very vocal about topics in his tweets, particularly tariff-related issues. However, President Trump hasn’t said much about cannabis yet. A Growth Op article in July discussed how Piper Jaffray analyst Michael Lavery discussed President Trump’s view on cannabis. He thinks that President Trump could make marijuana legalization one of his key platforms in the 2020 election. Also, making cannabis regulations easier could help President Trump gain support from younger voters. However, Lavery thinks that President Trump’s stance on cannabis legalization will depend on which Democrat candidate runs against him.

Lavery said, “By supporting cannabis, Trump may be able to incrementally broaden his appeal with swing voters without alienating his base.”

Other candidates’ views
The Growth Op article also discussed Biden’s stance on cannabis. Biden is the only Democratic candidate who opposes full-scale legalization. However, he supports decriminalizing cannabis.

Other candidates like Bernie Sanders and Andrew Yang also support marijuana legalization. To learn more about candidates’ views, read US Cannabis Update: Gardner and Warren Reintroduce STATES Act.

Headwind for the sector
The cannabis industry is in the spotlight now. What could threaten the sector? FDA regulations have always made it difficult for the sector. And now, the ongoing FBI investigation into industry corruption added to the stress. Read Cannabis Industry: FBI and FDA Tighten the Screws to learn more. Cannabis stocks have shown immense potential in 2019.