Law The Cannabis Chronicles - Misc Cannabis News

[CarolKing]

Federal Marijuana Prohibition Is Putting Patients At Risk Of Consuming Contaminated Products, Study Finds

The ongoing federal prohibition of marijuana is getting between consumers and safe products, according to a new study resulting from a year-long investigation into the prevalence of various contaminants in lab-tested cannabis. Looking at disparities in legal states’ approach to contaminants, as...

www.marijuanamoment.net

 

[CarolKing]

Biden pardons thousands of people convicted of marijuana possession, orders review of federal pot laws

Biden also ordered a review of how marijuana is classified under federal law, saying the current schedule system "makes no sense."

www.cnbc.com

let’s see if this goes anywhere. It will be up to the states

 

[Baron23]

​

Schumer Says Congress Is ‘Very Close’ To Passing Marijuana Banking And Expungements Bill After Work With ‘A Bunch Of Republicans’​

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) says Congress is getting “very close” to introducing and passing a marijuana bill with provisions covering banking access for legal businesses and expungements of past convictions, citing progress he’s made in discussions with a “bunch of Republican senators.”

During a debate with his Republican reelection opponent Joe Pinion on Sunday, Schumer was asked about a separate broader cannabis legalization bill he filed this year and whether he felt it would make more sense to first promote more research into marijuana before ending prohibition.

While the top senator said that research is “very, very important,” he pointed out that “many states have approved legalization of cannabis,” and so the policy is already “upon us.”

“But we are getting very close,” Schumer said in the debate, which was hosted by Spectrum News. “I am working in a bipartisan way with Democrats and Republicans to take the SAFE Banking Act, which allows financial institutions to involve themselves in cannabis companies and lend money to them—but it also does some things for justice, such as expunging a record.”

He gave the example of a 15-year-old busted over a “small amount of marijuana” who was ultimately sentenced harshly in a manner that would be consistent with possessing and selling heroin and whose “life was ruined.”

“So, expunging the records is important, and we’re getting closer,” Schumer said. “We may be able to get something done rather soon. I’m working with a bunch of Republican senators, a bunch of Democratic senators, to get something passed.”

What the senator is talking about is the much-anticipated SAFE Plus package, which is expected to build upon a standalone cannabis banking measure that’s passed the House in some form seven times now but which has stalled in the Senate under both Democratic and Republican control.

The plan, according to several lawmakers, is to file the package of modest marijuana reforms some time during the lame duck session following next week’s midterm elections, pass it through both chambers and send it to the president’s desk before the end of the current Congress.
Meanwhile, Pinion, the Republican challenger, was asked for his opinion on ending federal cannabis prohibition at the debate and started by saying that “we need to deal with the fact that we’re not talking about your mom and dad’s dope.”

“We’re talking about THC levels that have been off the charts,” he said. “I think you bring up a good point, the notion that we would release it on the citizenry at the federal level before we’ve actually done the due diligence seems reckless and irresponsible. Just my thoughts.”

He then made a pivot to the opioid overdose crisis, suggesting that there’s a prevalence of fentanyl-laced cannabis and saying “we now have people that are trying to smoke marijuana and are going to drop dead.”

“There are unintended consequences. It is a thread that runneth between all of this, from the border crisis to even this conversation about marijuana, because Chuck Schumer has not taken the business of securing our border and people are dying,” Pinion said. “And so I think, in the event that we’re going to go down this path at the federal level, we should do so in a manner that recognizes that these decisions have dire consequences and that people are actually dying, in some cases, because of them.”

The SAFE Plus bill that Schumer is working to finalize with bipartisan and bicameral input is not expected to include language that would federally legalize marijuana, however.

Last month, the House sponsor of a marijuana banking bill said that he recently spoke with the majority leader at an event at the White House and discussed the need to enact the bipartisan reform this session.

Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-CO) said that he impressed upon the leader the importance of his SAFE Banking Act and Schumer assured him that the chamber is “working on it” and is “going to get going” on the reform.

Lawmakers have signaled that the SAFE Plus legislation will contain protections for banks that work with state-legal marijuana businesses, as well as other modest proposals to provide medical cannabis access for military veterans, promote research and more.

One thing that Schumer is not working on is a plan to let Amtrak train passengers buy and use cannabis during their travel, as some people came to believe after a fake news article was published last week. His office confirmed to Marijuana Moment that the story was made up.

 

[Baron23]

I simply cannot comment on the title of this article and stay within Mom's rules.

However, it is a very good article and highlights the cowardliness and nonfeasance of our elected professional politicians and the bureaucracy that they allow to run rampant so as to protect their place at the public trough.

I have yet to hear a coherent defense of why the DEA is allowed to determine rescheduling. Fuck the DEA.

Biden ponders marijuana moves as states forge ahead​

Five states will vote next week on initiatives that would legalize recreational marijuana​

By Lauren Clason and Sandhya Raman
Posted November 2, 2022 at 9:08am
Corrected 1:37 p.m. | Five states will vote next week on whether to join the 21 states and territories that have legalized recreational marijuana for adults. But the federal government is still stuck on whether to remove the plant from Schedule I of the federal drug code — a category reserved for highly addictive substances with no medical benefit.

The Biden administration’s Oct. 6 announcement that it would revisit that classification comes after previous, yearslong reviews of marijuana’s categorization fell flat, and experts are split on whether things might be different this time.

“If history is to serve as any precedent, I wouldn’t count on this review being wrapped up at a time when there is still a Biden administration,” said Paul Armentano, deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

But Rosalie Pacula, a health policy professor at the University of Southern California, believes cannabis will ultimately be rescheduled, pointing to a 2020 change made by the United Nations that loosened control at the international level that the U.S. supported.

“And so I think that reconsideration of our own scheduling here in the U.S. is just a natural extension of how we voted in the world meeting,” she said.

Research needs​

The U.S. policy debate is largely centered on the question of whether more research is needed on potential benefits and harms — particularly around potency — since the market is awash in so many different products. The vast majority of states have approved some form of marijuana for medicinal purposes.

“There are so many indications for which the dispensaries are selling marijuana, and yet the evidence for most of them is basically non-existent,” said National Institute on Drug Abuse Director Nora Volkow, citing cancer, post-traumatic stress disorder and attention deficit disorder.

There is some evidence marijuana can help with problems like chronic pain, loss of appetite and symptoms of dementia, she added. There are now also Food and Drug Administration-approved drugs using cannabis compounds.

But the way people consume the plant, such as smoking, can have negative effects too. Volkow also cited concerns around psychosis and impacts on brain development.

NIDA has been following nearly 12,000 children in an ongoing study since 2015, when the children were 9 or 10. Those kids are now 15, around the age when many marijuana users first start. The agency is also launching a medical marijuana registry to track how patients use the drug.

But Armentano dismissed the argument for more research before legalization as a “load of crap,” pointing to the large body of global evidence easily available through sites like PubMed. He said the lengthy administrative process is why Congress should step in instead.

“Congress enacted a bad law,” he said of the 1970 Controlled Substances Act. “It's their responsibility to go and either amend or repeal that law, not to rely on some bureaucratic agencies to do so.”

A House-passed research bill that would speed decisions on marijuana research applications from scientists and cultivators could potentially clear the Senate in the lame duck.

But the bill omits a provision from previous legislation that would grant researchers access to cannabis grown to state specifications. Such a provision would dramatically broaden access to manufacturers and a variety of products not available through federally approved growers, Armentano said.

Still, potential harm studies are done through observation studies where people self-identify as marijuana users. Those studies can be done now, he argued, noting that’s how it was discovered that cigarettes increase the risk of cancer.

“Not because we did a study where we gave people tobacco cigarettes and had them smoke in a controlled setting for 20 years,” he said. “And then said, oh my God, we gave you lung cancer.”

White House push​

President Joe Biden’s call for a review triggers a joint process between the Department of Health and Human Services and the Drug Enforcement Administration. The FDA first conducts an eight-factor analysis, which NIDA reviews and decides whether or not to concur. HHS then sends the recommendations to the DEA, which makes the final decision.

HHS and the DEA most recently recommended and ruled against rescheduling in 2016. That review took more than four years.

This time, however, the petition comes from Biden himself. The directive came just a month before a high-stakes midterm election, where the Democrats’ razor-thin majority in Congress is likely to splinter. The move aligns with widespread polling showing that two-thirds of Americans, including at least half of Republicans, support fully legalizing marijuana.

Despite that, a Brookings Institution report found that 81 percent of congressional candidates were silent on the issue.

The legalization movement also lacks support from the medical community, including the American Medical Association and the American Society of Addiction Medicine. Both groups instead support rescheduling cannabis to Schedule II to open it up to more research.

But demoting marijuana to Schedule II would do little to close the gap with states. Any scheduled drug below Schedule I requires FDA oversight, which theoretically means that cannabis products would have to be FDA-approved. Individuals would also need a prescription from a doctor.

In the states​

The state landscape is a different story.

Voters in Arkansas, Maryland, Missouri, North Dakota and South Dakota will choose Nov. 8 whether to legalize marijuana for adults 21 and older.
Arkansas’s measure would allow marijuana to be sold commercially through state-licensed retailers. Cannabis sales would include an additional tax with the revenue split among law enforcement, the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, drug court programs and the state.

Missouri’s legalization measure also would include a tax. It would additionally allow some individuals charged with marijuana-related offenses to petition for release from incarceration or parole, in keeping with Biden’s related move to pardon federal convictions for marijuana possession.

Maryland’s initiative would direct the state legislature to pass accompanying legislation related to taxation, regulation and distribution.

South Dakota’s measure would allow adults to own and cultivate up to three marijuana plants. It follows the passing of a 2020 state initiative on cannabis that was ultimately struck down by the state Supreme Court.

North Dakota’s initiative is similar to its neighbor’s but would also require the state health department to establish rules regulating marijuana use. A previous state marijuana initiative was rejected in 2018.

In addition, Colorado voters this year will decide whether to decriminalize some psychedelics and implement a “natural medicines” access program to oversee their use.

The state battles are funded on both sides by a constellation of wealthy donors and dark money groups. Pro-marijuana campaigns are massively outspending anti-legalization groups, backed by the likes of hotelier and tobacco heir Nicholas Pritzker, tech guru Sean Parker and financier George Soros.

Anti-legalization groups also claim their own deep-pocketed donors. Safe and Secure Communities’ donors, for example, include chicken magnate Ron Cameron, the owner of Mountaire Farms, and shipping mogul Richard Uihlein, founder of Uline.

Smart Approaches to Marijuana is another group involved in the fight against cannabis and psychedelics in all six states.

Executive Vice President Luke Niforatos said the group is taking a long-term approach to the debate as states increasingly loosen restrictions.

“If they go ahead and make that choice, then what we’re going to do is try to learn everything we can from those state examples, get the pure facts and information out to the public as best as we can,” Niforatos said, citing concerns about addiction and mental illness.

“If that means that down the road this ends up being the final decision across the country, then we’re going to be that accountable voice for the industry,” he added. “But I do think we’ve got a long way to go.”

 

[Baron23]

Again, out of respect for board owner/admin, I will no comment. But there is, IMO, much to critically ponder in this article.

Biden Says His Marijuana Pardons Have Improved Black Americans’ Lives, But He Overstates Real-Life Impact

President Joe Biden says that issuing mass pardons for federal marijuana possession offenses is one of the top things he’s done to improve the lives of Black Americans since taking office. However, he appears to be to overstating the practical impact of his action.

In a radio interview on The Rickey Smiley Morning Show on Tuesday, the host pressed Biden on what he’s done help the Black community at this point, nearly two years into his term. The president quickly responded by citing the cannabis pardon proclamation he issued last month.

“Well, I hope I’ve improved the lives of African Americans like I said I would do,” he said. “For example, too many African Americans were denied everything from Pell Grants, student loans, housing, et cetera, because they were arrested for possession of marijuana—many too many. Whites as well.”

“So anybody who was ever arrested just for the possession of marijuana, their record is expunged,” he said. “They don’t have to list it anymore, and it’s going to free up a lot of opportunities.”

While a presidential pardon represents formal forgiveness for the covered offense—in this case, simple possession of marijuana—it’s not the same thing as an expungement where the crime is wiped from a person’s record, contrary to Biden’s claim in the radio interview.

A Congressional Research Service (CRS) report published in 2016 discusses conflicting interpretations of the impact of a pardon, with the general consensus being that it may restore certain rights but it does not clear a person’s record in the same way as an expungement.

The report says that “a pardon recipient may still encounter hurdles when character is a factor of eligibility because a pardon does not eliminate underlying guilt or the commission of the offense itself.”

When it comes to ongoing collateral consequences of a conviction, CRS said that there may be circumstances where employment could still be affected, even with a pardon.

“The continued presence of a conviction on a person’s record, notwithstanding a pardon, could still raise barriers with respect to such person’s suitability,” it says. In contrast, “an expungement of one’s records generally appears to go a step beyond the effect of a pardon and removes the record of the conviction as well as the underlying guilt.”

A pardon is believed to restore certain rights, however, such as the ability to buy and possess firearms. In that example, there’s specific federal statute in place that provides for that relief.

With respect to expungement, a key House committee approved a series of criminal justice reform bills in September—including bipartisan proposals to clear records for prior federal marijuana convictions and provide funding for states that implement systems of automatic expungements.

While advocates have cheered the president’s current clemency move, as well as his comments asking governors to provide take similar actions at the state level and directing an administrative review of marijuana scheduling, many have pointed out that the relief Biden provided is significantly limited in scope.

As the U.S. Sentencing Commission (USSC) pointed out in a report last month, the president’s action directly impacts about 6,500 U.S. citizens who’ve committed federal cannabis possession offenses and 1,100 people described as “resident/legal alien offenders,” in addition to those who’ve violated the law in Washington, D.C.

A demographic breakdown further shows that, among those convicted of at least one marijuana offense under the relevant federal code, 41.3 percent are white, 31.8 percent are Hispanic and 23.6 percent are Black.

Still, it remains notable that Biden is explicitly recognizing marijuana reform as a racial equity issue, citing the pardons as the first example of how he’s worked to improve the lives of the Black community in the new interview. He went on to list his administration’s student loan relief action and appointment of the first female Black Supreme Court justice.

Biden has been routinely touting his cannabis clemency action, saying at one point that he’s “changed the lives of thousands of people.” But he’s strongly indicated that he’s unwilling to provide further relief for those with marijuana sales convictions.

Activists with Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP), Last Prisoner Project (LPP) and DCMJ staged protests outside of the White House last week to call attention to that issue, demanding that Biden release the estimated 2,800 people currently in federal prison for marijuana convictions that aren’t limited to simple possession.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said last week that Biden’s marijuana pardon proclamation should be “applauded,” but the action is nonetheless critically limited because it exempts non-citizens who constitute the vast majority of federal possession cases.

Meanwhile, the White House drug czar recently cheered Biden’s “historic” move to issue a mass marijuana pardon and direct an administrative review of the drug’s scheduling status. And he is again highlighting that there are “clearly” medical benefits of cannabis—which he says shouldn’t be ignored because of separate concerns about youth use.

The Justice Department and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have committed to quickly carrying out the separate scheduling review the president directed, which could result in a recommendation to place cannabis in a lower schedule or remove it altogether, effectively legalizing the plant under federal law.

HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra has said officials will “work as quickly as we can” to complete the analysis of cannabis scheduling per the president’s directive.

The Department of Justice, for its part, “will expeditiously administer the President’s proclamation, which pardons individuals who engaged in simple possession of marijuana, restoring political, civil, and other rights to those convicted of that offense,” a department spokesperson said.

Labor Secretary Marty Walsh said that officials will be working diligently to ensure that people who received a pardon for federal marijuana offenses under the presidential proclamation are not impeded from future job opportunities.

Vice President Kamala Harris said last month that voters should elect lawmakers who support marijuana reform so that Congress can enact a “uniform approach” to the issue in light of the president’s cannabis pardons.

A series of polls have shown that Americans strongly support the president’s pardon action, and they also don’t think that marijuana should be federally classified as a Schedule I drug.

 

[CarolKing]

Scientists fed dairy cows cannabis to see what would happen

Several hemp-derived products have been launched in recent years, including animal feed, raising the prospect of potential risks to human and animal health.

www.newsweek.com

Dairy cows fed a diet containing industrial hemp experienced several physical and behavioral changes, including increased yawning, salivation and unsteady movements, according to a study.

The authors of the study, which was published in the journal Nature Food, said the findings could have implications for human health as the popularity of industrial hemp products grows, although more research is needed to assess the risks.

Industrial hemp is a type of cannabis plant that is cultivated for a wide variety of uses, including textiles, paper, cosmetics, food, biofuel, biodegradable plastics, construction materials, food and animal feed.

 

[Baron23]

I certainly believe this poll as its in line with many other recent polls.

So here is the question...why aren't our "elected Federal representatives" doing it...representing our views that is. No excuse....fact is they are IMO more interested in perpetuating their place at the public trough than actually doing our bidding.

Cheers

Percentage of Americans who want federal Cannabis Legalization remains at record high level ​

A new Gallup poll shows that Americans who support legal weed is at an all-time high.​

The number of Americans who support legal marijuana hasn’t waned. A new Gallup poll show that 68 per cent of Americans are more supportive of marijuana than they’ve ever been.
The numbers have greatly increased since Gallup polls first started asking Americans about marijuana in 1969. At that time, only 12 per cent of Americans were in favour of the drug.
Poll results show that the majority of subgroups are in favour of marijuana use, including liberals, Democrats, young adults, women, middle and upper-income adults, and town and rural residents.
Even older adults and Hispanic adults, which are some of the least supportive demographics, are turning in higher than expected numbers, with them supporting marijuana legalization by 53 per cent and 56 per cent respectively.
The groups that are least supportive of marijuana legalization include conservatives with 49 per cent and those who attend church on a weekly basis 46 per cent.
Erik Altieri, executive director of The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, shared a statement on the poll’s results, commenting on the discrepancy that exists between Americans and political action. “An overwhelming majority of Americans have consistently opposed our failed prohibition of marijuana for nearly a decade; it defies common sense and the concept of sound policy that our elected officials at the federal level have yet to take meaningful action,” he said.
“Voters of almost every age and in virtually every region of the country agree that marijuana should be legal. It is well past time that Congress finally takes action to reform our nation’s laws to reflect the people’s will and relegate our disastrous prohibition policies to the trash bin of history.”
Gallup’s poll shows that marijuana isn’t as novel as it used to be, with the drug’s approval remaining steady over the past three years. While older demographics are less likely to support weed, younger people, no matter their religion or politics, are more open to embracing the plant and painting a more accurate picture of the country’s future and their stance on the drug.

 

[Baron23]

Given the title of this article, I almost posted it to the "Weird Cannabis News" thread! hahaha​

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Three GOP Lawmakers Lay Out Next Steps For Marijuana Reform In Lame Duck Session And Next Congress​

Three Republican members of Congress who support marijuana legalization are laying out their vision for reform during the current lame duck, as well as the next session when the GOP takes back control of the House, expressing optimism about the momentum toward ending federal prohibition.


Reps. Dave Joyce (R-OH), Brian Mast (R-FL) and Nancy Mace (R-SC) shared their perspectives on the issue in an interview series with RealClearPolitics, sponsored by the Coalition for Cannabis Policy, Education, and Regulation (CPEAR) and released on Thursday.


Each lawmaker said that they hoped to see the Senate move forward with some kind of marijuana reform in the remaining weeks of the 117th Congress, saying that while the expectation is that the Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is finalizing will be incremental, those small steps could be refined and expanded upon, even with a divided Congress next session.

Joyce, a co-chair of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus, said that it was a “good” thing for marijuana reform that Democrats held onto the Senate because it “gave them more runway toward the end of the year.” He said bipartisan senators like Schumer and Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) have put in “hard work” on the forthcoming package, which is expected to center of cannabis banking and expungements, and he hopes “that they continue to stay consistent.”


“Hopefully some of these things will get accomplished at the end of this term,” he said, adding that it would set up lawmakers in the next session to smooth out any “rough edges” in the legislation and advance follow-up bills to address any “unforeseen” issues with the reforms.


Each of the three lawmakers said that they’d like to see an end to federal prohibition, and that conservatives should embrace the Constitution’s federalist principles by letting states make their own choices about cannabis policy. But they also recognized that diverging opinions about the details and scope of reform make it more challenging to advance substantive legislation.


Joyce—who is the sponsor of a bipartisan cannabis expungements bill alongside Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), as well as another measure to prepare the federal government for eventual legalization—said that he expects to see more comprehensive reform move as younger generations of lawmakers, with experience in state legislatures that have enacted legalization, take their seats in Congress.


In the interim, the congressman said it’s important to be strategic about pursuing incremental reform, “meeting [lawmakers] where they’re at so they get comfortable with it and get bills in a patchwork way moving forward.”


He also pointed out that taking that approach would make it more likely that legislation doesn’t just move through Congress but also receives the signature of President Joe Biden, who “unfortunately, drugs have affected his family, so he’s not coming to this as a willing participant, necessarily.”


Mast, who replaced the late Rep. Don Young (R-AK) as the second GOP co-chair of the Cannabis Caucus this year, made similar points, though he seemed more sour on the prospects of enacting meaningful reform during the lame duck and said it’s “more likely in the next Congress.”


Internally, GOP members of the House are rallying around the idea of putting together “simple, straightforward pieces of legislation so that people can know exactly what their representatives are, in fact, standing up for,” Mast said, adding that the strategy could be more effective for marijuana reform compared to placing various proposals in large-scale measures as some lawmakers have tried.


In that sense, the congressman said that he is “actually more hopeful” about marijuana legislation moving forward in the next session with a GOP House majority, and he said that the “base” reform should be descheduling.


“I think the argument [for cannabis reform] gets stronger and stronger every day,” he said. And he encouraged his Republican colleagues to keep the same states’ rights mentality with marijuana that they do for other issues like reproductive rights and immigration policy.


“Be consistent and apply that same policy in the same way,” Mast said. “But, like I said, one of the things that, in my opinion, gives us a greater ability to advance this in this Republican House of Representatives is going to be our internal push to have simple up-or-down votes.”


The congressman, who lost both his legs while serving as an Army explosive ordnance disposal technician in Afghanistan, also spoke about the benefits of medical cannabis for military veterans.


Mace, for her part, said that any GOP members who oppose cannabis reform are “on the wrong side of this issue, whether you live in a blue state or a red state.”


The congresswoman, who is sponsoring a legalization bill, added that advancing reform means finding “ways to make this a bipartisan issue,” and the simplest way to do that would be to frame it as a states rights issue.


Mace’s States Reform Act (SRA) would let states make those policy decisions, but it also includes more targeted provisions such as imposing a federal tax and distribute revenue to certain agencies and programs. And that creates a challenge for enacting the bill on a bipartisan and bicameral basis.


“We are doing a disservice to the American people by sitting on our hands and doing absolutely nothing,” she said. “And I blame both sides of the aisle. I blame Republicans and I blame Democrats for making a lot of promises and not following through on them.”


She made similar points in a recent interview with Marijuana Moment that followed a hearing on cannabis reform in a House Oversight subcommittee that she serves on as the GOP ranking member.


Meanwhile, Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-CO), the House sponsor of a bipartisan marijuana banking bill, said this week that he sees signs that the Senate will finally act during the lame duck session—but he is cautioning that he’s “been disappointed before.”


Talks on the omnibus bill have been intensifying in recent weeks, with the Schumer discussing the proposal with key bipartisan senators. But as Perlmutter noted, time is running thin.


The majority leader said late last month that Congress is getting “very close” to introducing and passing the marijuana banking and expungements bill, citing progress he’s made in discussions with a “bunch of Republican senators.”


Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), meanwhile, said following the election that Democrats who want to enact cannabis reform must either do it “now” during the lame duck session or wait until “many years from now” when his party has a shot at controlling Congress again.

 

[Baron23]

While I absolutely believe this study is valid, I kinda don't think it will dissuade the militant anti-cannabis crowd from wrapping themselves up in the "oh, but think of the children" flag to justify their prohibitionist position.

Federally Funded Study Shows Marijuana Legalization Is Not Associated With Increased Teen Us​

https://www.marijuanamoment.net/fed...n-is-not-associated-with-increased-teen-use/#

A new study funded by a top federal drug agency has found that state-level marijuana legalization is not associated with increased youth cannabis use.
The research article, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine this month, looked at data from three longitudinal studies on past-year cannabis consumption and frequency of use among adolescents from 1999 to 2020 in Oregon, New York and Washington State.

Washington voters legalized marijuana in 2012, followed by those in Oregon in 2014. New York moved to enact legalization last year, but retail stores haven’t opened yet, with regulators saying that will likely start happening before the end of this year.

With marijuana legalization on the ballot in five states across the U.S. this month, opponents have repeatedly made the argument that the reform would lead more underage people to use cannabis, despite numerous studies contradicting that point.

Now another study has similarly debunked the argument, with researchers at the University of Washington, Colorado State University and Oregon Social Learning Center finding that the “change in legalization status across adolescence was not significantly related to within-person change in the probability or frequency of self-reported past-year cannabis use.”

The study, which received funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), showed that “youth who spent more of their adolescence under legalization were no more or less likely to have used cannabis at age 15 years than adolescents who spent little or no time under legalization.”


“Taken together with previous studies, these findings add weight to the conclusion that adolescent cannabis use is holding steady in the wake of legalization, at least in the years relatively proximate to the policy change,” the research article says. “This analyses expand on previous findings by specifically parsing variance in adolescent cannabis use owing to age, sex, birth cohort (i.e., population-level trends in use), and legalization.”

“Findings are not consistent with changes in the prevalence or frequency of adolescent cannabis use after legalization.”

This builds on an already sizable body of scientific literature that’s similarly determined that creating regulated cannabis markets for adults either has a neutral effect on underage use, or is even associated with declines in the behavior.

For example, another federally funded study from Michigan State University researchers that was published in the journal PLOS One this summer found that “cannabis retail sales might be followed by the increased occurrence of cannabis onsets for older adults” in legal states, “but not for underage persons who cannot buy cannabis products in a retail outlet.”

Meanwhile, adolescent marijuana use in Colorado declined significantly in 2021, according to the latest version of a biennial state survey released in June.
“When we do look at our study along with the other studies that have asked similar questions, the pattern of results so far is encouraging,” University of Washington’s Jennifer Bailey, author of the new NIDA-funded study, told Marijuana Moment. “That is, most studies are not showing increases in teen cannabis use following legalization of cannabis for adults.”

She cautioned, however, that “we need to keep monitoring teen cannabis use in the wake of legalization.”

“Although things look encouraging now, as we note in our paper, alcohol use increased slowly over 40 years after the end of alcohol prohibition,” she said. “So, it may take more time for us to see any effects of legalization on teen cannabis use. Hopefully, trends will continue as they are going now.”
Advocates have long argued that providing regulated access to marijuana at stores where there are requirements to check ID, for example, would mitigate the risk of adolescent consumption.

A recent study out of California found that “there was 100 percent compliance with the ID policy to keep underage patrons from purchasing marijuana directly from licensed outlets.”

The Coalition for Cannabis Policy, Education, and Regulation (CPEAR), an alcohol and tobacco industry-backed marijuana policy group, also released a report this year analyzing data on youth marijuana use rates amid the state-level legalization movement.

One of the most recent federally funded surveys on the topic stressed that youth marijuana use “decreased significantly” in 2021, as did teen consumption of illicit substances overall.

The 2020 federally funded Monitoring the Future survey further found that cannabis consumption among adolescents “did not significantly change in any of the three grades for lifetime use, past 12-month use, past 30-day use, and daily use from 2019-2020.”

Another federally funded study, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), was released in October showing that youth marijuana use dropped in 2020 amid the coronavirus pandemic and as more states moved to enact legalization.

Further, an analysis published by the Journal of the American Medical Association last year found that enacting legalization has an overall impact on adolescent cannabis consumption that is “statistically indistinguishable from zero.”

The U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics also analyzed youth surveys of high school students from 2009 to 2019 and concluded that there’s been “no measurable difference” in the percentage of those in grades 9-12 who reported consuming cannabis at least once in the past 30 days.
In a separate, earlier analysis, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that marijuana consumption among high school students declined during the peak years of state-legal recreational cannabis legalization.

There was “no change” in the rate of current cannabis use among high school students from 2009-2019, the survey found. When analyzed using a quadratic change model, however, lifetime marijuana consumption decreased during that period.

Another study released by Colorado officials in 2020 showed that youth cannabis consumption in the state “has not significantly changed since legalization” in 2012, though methods of consumption are diversifying.

An official with the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy’s National Marijuana Initiative went even further in 2020, admitting that, for reasons that are unclear, youth consumption of cannabis “is going down” in Colorado and other legalized states and that it’s “a good thing” even if “we don’t understand why.”

 

[Marlon Rando]

Man Charged with killing 4 workers at a Pot Farm

Man charged with killing 4 workers at Oklahoma pot farm

 

[momofthegoons]

Fate Of Marijuana Banking Reform Uncertain As Lawmakers Delay Defense Bill Consideration Amid Disagreements​

House lawmakers have delayed committee consideration of a large-scale defense bill—which advocates had hoped to see advance with marijuana reform provisions attached—amid disagreements over several key issues that have not been resolved. Meanwhile, the offices of several Republican senators met with the Department of Justice to discuss their concerns with pending cannabis banking reforms.

Advocates are closely watching to see if the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) will be used as a vehicle for marijuana banking, expungements and other reform legislation that bicameral and bipartisan lawmakers have been crafting.

The House Rules Committee was scheduled to take up the NDAA on Monday afternoon, but Chairman Jim McGovern (D-MA) said at the start of the meeting that the “package is not ready yet,” adding that “our committee remains ready to take it up as soon as the text is finalized.”

He didn’t detail the outstanding issues, but some main points of disagreement reportedly surround language on unrelated provisions concerning the repeal of the vaccine mandate for military service members and federal permitting reform.

McGovern did not say when he expects the NDAA text to be available for his panel’s consideration.



At the same time, details about the so-called SAFE Plus package that lawmakers have been negotiating are emerging, including the potential inclusion of language on gun rights for marijuana consumers. The cannabis reforms could still make it into NDAA, or be advanced through separate omnibus appropriations legislation, or even as a standalone, before the end of the year.

Talks over the cannabis deal have been intensifying in recent weeks, and they were complicated in part by a Justice Department memo to senators outlining concerns about marijuana banking reform that sources told Marijuana Moment have since been resolved. Key GOP senators met with DOJ to discuss the issues on Monday, Politico reported.

The House already approved its version of the defense legislation earlier this year, with the language of the SAFE Banking Act included, but it was uncertain whether the Senate would go along with it, especially amid calls for more comprehensive reform.

NDAA is now being pursued through a separate, unrelated legislative vehicle that was already passed by the Senate, which previously refused to sign off on passing cannabis banking reform as part of the prior year’s bill in 2021—but the political dynamics have shifted considerably since then.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has dedicated significant time to negotiations over SAFE Plus, and the fact that Republicans reclaimed the majority in the House following last month’s elections added urgency to advancing some kind of cannabis reform during the lame duck session.

The expectation is that SAFE Plus, in whatever form it is ultimately introduced, will include the SAFE Banking Act, which provides protections for financial institutions that work with state-legal marijuana businesses, and the bipartisan Harnessing Opportunities by Pursuing Expungement (HOPE) Act, which would incentivize state-level cannabis expungements.

Sources have been telling Marijuana Moment for the past several months that lawmakers have been discussing adding in language to protect Second Amendment rights for cannabis consumers by exempting people in legalized states from a federal restriction that bars any “unlawful user” of a controlled substance from owning a firearm. Politico reported on Monday that the current negotiated package does, in fact, include the Gun Rights And Marijuana Act (GRAM) Act.

Meanwhile, at the request of certain Senate offices, the Justice Department wrote a recently disclosed memo earlier this year outlining areas of the SAFE Banking Act that it identified as potentially problematic. While Senate sources said that those issues have been fixed in the latest language, some GOP senators arranged a meeting with DOJ on Monday to go over the concerns.

Those lawmakers who met with department officials were Sens. Pat Toomey (R-PA), Jim Inhofe (R-OK) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA), according to Politico.

Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-CO), the House sponsor of the SAFE Banking Act, said last week that he sees signs that the Senate will finally act on the legislation during the lame duck session—but he cautioned that he’s “been disappointed before.”

Schumer recently met with Senate Banking Committee Chairman Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and bipartisan lead SAFE Banking Act sponsors Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Steve Daines (R-MT). He had a follow-up conversation with Daines last week, and the Republican senator told Politico that those talks have been “productive.”

Daines said that senators have been specifically addressing “questions [around] fairness, as it relates to income qualifications for a mortgage and so forth” to protect workers in the cannabis industry from being denied financial services as a result of their employment. The senator would “like to see some of those changes,” he said.

For his part, Brown said more recently that he had hoped the banking reform legislation would be included as an amendment to NDAA. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), a proponent of ending prohibition, also told Politico that he believes there’s enough support for the SAFE Banking Act, “even as a standalone.”

Schumer had said in October that Congress was getting “very close” to introducing and passing the marijuana banking and expungements bill, citing progress he’s made in discussions with a “bunch of Republican senators.”

Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), meanwhile, said following the election that Democrats who want to enact cannabis reform must either do it “now” during the lame duck session or wait until “many years from now” when his party has a shot at controlling Congress again.

Booker previously opposed moving marijuana banking reform before Congress effectively ended prohibition with an eye toward equity. But he softened his position in recent months, becoming increasingly open to moving the incremental legislation.

For some advocates, support for the so-called “SAFE Plus” package will be largely contingent on the details of changes to the banking language, as they’re discontent with the current provisions that have passed the House in some form seven times now.

Specifically, they’d like to see the bill amended to provide funding for Minority Deposit Institutions (MDIs) and Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) that lend commercial loans to minority-owned businesses.

They’re further called for changes to require banks that work with the cannabis industry to demonstrate non-discrimination in lending, as Supernova Women Executive Director Amber Senter wrote in a recent op-ed for Marijuana Moment.

These amendments align with some of the SAFE Banking Act recommendations that Cannabis Regulators of Color Coalition (CRCC) outlined in a paper sent to legislative leaders in August.

The Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA), meanwhile, sent a letter to Senate leadership last week, calling for a floor vote on the SAFE Banking Act “without further delay” by the year’s end.

“This legislation enjoys strong, bipartisan support, would resolve a conflict between state and federal law, and addresses a critical public safety concern,” ICBA, which commissioned a poll demonstrating that support earlier this year, said. “We urge its enactment without further delay.”

Another poll released last week found that three in four American voters—including bipartisan majorities—support ending federal marijuana prohibition, expunging prior convictions and allowing banks to work with state-legal cannabis businesses.

 

[momofthegoons]

Key Senate Chairman Signals Marijuana Banking Will Wait Until 2023, Says There’s ‘Interest In The Republican House'​

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Sherrod Brown (D-OH) signaled on Thursday that marijuana banking reform might be on hold until the next Congress in 2023, rather than passed during the lame duck session as advocates and stakeholders had hoped. However, Brown’s office told Marijuana Moment that the senator still would like to see the reform included in omnibus appropriations legislation this year so long as it contains additional provisions that he supports.

Asked about the Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act, the senator told Punchbowl News’s Brendan Pederson on Thursday that he expects to “take it up and get it through” in 2023, adding that “there’s interest in the Republican House.”

Brown also expressed interest in the expanded SAFE Plus bill that Senate leadership has been finalizing because it’s expected to go beyond simple banking reform and also contain other provisions dealing with expungements and more.



The new 2023 comments seemed to depart from what Brown said in an interview that aired on Monday, with the senator insisting that a deal with banking included “absolutely could still happen,” and lawmakers were “this close to a deal,” placing his thumb and index fingers about an inch apart.

But while the new remarks raised some initial concerns for advocates and stakeholders, Brown’s office sent a clarifying statement to Marijuana Moment on Thursday.

“Senator Brown would support SAFE Plus in the omnibus bill,” they said. “SAFE Plus includes provisions Senator Brown supports, such as clarity for [community development financial institutions] and for cannabis workers regarding mortgages.”

With Republicans set to reclaim a House majority in the next Congress, the idea that SAFE Banking has a clearer pathway in 2023 versus 2022 with Democrats currently in control of both chambers is questionable. The reform does enjoy strong bipartisan support, but it’s not clear that GOP leadership in the House will prioritize it, much less go along with an expanded version that contains the expungements components that Brown and others have pushed to include.

Brown has long maintained that he’s only interested in advancing cannabis banking if it’s paired with additional provisions on sentencing reform.

Punchbowl News also raised concerns among advocates and stakeholders earlier this week after another of its reporters said that SAFE Banking “will not be included” in a forthcoming omnibus appropriations package. The text of that legislation has not been released, though lawmakers have reached an agreement on a “framework.”

Meanwhile, Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT), who is a lead sponsor of the standalone SAFE Banking Act, said on Thursday that he is talking to leadership about using the omnibus as the vehicle to enact the legislation but that it will be “an uphill climb” to get an agreement on it.



These developments come after the GOP Senate whip said he’s not expecting the cannabis proposal to be attached to the spending bill, either. And Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who applauded the exclusion of SAFE Banking from a must-pass defense bill last week, has repeatedly signaled that he’d fight against attempts to advance it through appropriations as well.

McConnell said in a floor speech on Wednesday that “poison pills…will need to stay away from the process.”

McConnell has previously referred to marijuana banking as a “poison pill” in the context of other large-scale legislation, but he didn’t explicitly reference the reform in these latest remarks. Still, it’s not an especially encouraging position for advocates who view appropriations as one of the last remaining vehicles for SAFE Banking or a broader SAFE Plus package that could include expungements and other cannabis provisions, short of moving it as a standalone before Congress adjourns for the session.

Not everyone shares this pessimism, however, including SAFE Banking sponsor Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-CO), who has made abundantly clear that he’s unwilling to give up the push and will continue to seek the bill’s passage before his retirement at the end of the 117th Congress.

A staffer in Perlmutter’s office told Marijuana Moment on Wednesday that while there’s uncertainty about advancing cannabis banking reform through the omnibus spending bill, the congressman “is still pushing as hard as he can and talking to leadership.”

Perlmutter said at a House Rules Committee meeting on Tuesday that SAFE Banking is one of two “outstanding matters that I’m still working on.” After the reform was left out of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) last week, he said he was looking at appropriations as an alternative vehicle, but at this point he said he’s just intent on adding it to “something.”

With each day that passes in the lame duck, there’s growing frustration and anxiety among advocates and stakeholders, some of whom feel that this may be the last chance in the short-term to get marijuana banking enacted before Republicans reclaim the majority in the House starting on January 3.

For his part, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) has pinned blame on McConnell, telling NJ.com that his vocal opposition to cannabis reform has had a chilling effect of GOP members who might otherwise be amenable to passing legislation that contains SAFE Banking language.

“They’re dead set on anything in marijuana,” he said, referring to Republican leadership. “That to me is the obstacle.”

“The caucus is clearly divided but the people in power in their caucus are clearly against doing anything on marijuana,” he added.

While McConnell’s influence on the issue during the lame duck seems apparent, however, many industry stakeholders feel that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) shares at least some of the blame, arguing that it’s incumbent on him to leverage the Democratic majority and force floor consideration of the incremental reform.

It’s the least he could do, they say, given his earlier promises to bring comprehensive legalization to the floor.

It’s not as if everyone has accepted the idea that a Democratic Senate and GOP House means that incremental reform is dead on arrival in the 118th Congress. There are some who even believe that House Republicans may take the chance to seize the issue from Democrats with their new majority—which is certainly the hope of pro-legalization Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC).

The congresswoman said in a since-deleted tweet on Wednesday that “SAFE Banking is a good bill and it’s a shame all the misinformation about how its passage was imminent. As we close on the end of the legislative session we must look ahead and look beyond SAFE next Congress.”

The post picked up some attention from advocates and stakeholders before being deleted, but a staffer told Marijuana Moment that the congresswoman plans to expand on her thinking in a Twitter thread on Thursday.

As supporters wait to see what actually makes it into the omnibus appropriations legislation, which is now expected to be released in the coming days, there’s been a concerted push from a wide range of interests to pressure lawmakers to get the job done.

One campaign from the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) picked up particular steam on Wednesday, with major corporate players and celebrities sharing the organization’s call-to-action on SAFE Banking.

Industry players have long been unified around the idea of passing SAFE Banking, and doing so urgently, but the coordinated push this past week has underscored just how high they view the stakes in these final weeks of the lame duck.

Financial organizations including the National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions (NAFICU) and Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) have also been amplifying their message to lawmakers to get the job done sooner than later.

Last week, SAFE Banking sponsor Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) said that he will “keep fighting” to get the reform “passed this year,” adding that “this is not the end of the road.”

“We need to make sure that legal cannabis businesses have access to the financial services they need—operating in cash is an open door to robbery and money laundering,” he said. That’s also a point highlighted in a recent analysis that looked at the trends and motivations for crimes targeting cannabis businesses in Washington State.

One senator who could make or break the final SAFE deal in appropriations is Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), who was among a small group of senators who met with the Justice Department this week to seek assurances that issues it raised over SAFE Banking in a memo earlier this year have been effectively resolved.

Meanwhile, Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), who will serve as Senate president pro tempore for the 118th Congress, is also pushing for passage of the cannabis banking reform during the lame duck, which she discussed at a leadership briefing with Schumer last week.

Murray said that Democrats have made significant progress on a number of issues, even with the slimmest possible majority in the Senate. She said that “we are not done yet,” and there are areas of bipartisan consensus that can still advance before the end of the session, which includes “making sure our legal cannabis businesses can access credit.”

Whether SAFE or SAFE Plus makes it into the forthcoming appropriations deal is yet to be seen. But it’s far from the only cannabis reform that advocates are hoping to see included in the final package delivered to the president’s desk.

The various appropriations bills that the House and Senate considered or advanced this year contain provisions ranging from protecting state marijuana programs from federal interference to removing the congressional blockade that’s prevented Washington, D.C. to implement a system of regulated cannabis sales for adults.

 

[momofthegoons]

Federally Funded Study Shows Marijuana Legalization Is Not Associated With Increased Teen Use​

A new study funded by a top federal drug agency has found that state-level marijuana legalization is not associated with increased youth cannabis use.

The research article, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine this month, looked at data from three longitudinal studies on past-year cannabis consumption and frequency of use among adolescents from 1999 to 2020 in Oregon, New York and Washington State.

Washington voters legalized marijuana in 2012, followed by those in Oregon in 2014. New York moved to enact legalization last year, but retail stores haven’t opened yet, with regulators saying that will likely start happening before the end of this year.

With marijuana legalization on the ballot in five states across the U.S. this month, opponents have repeatedly made the argument that the reform would lead more underage people to use cannabis, despite numerous studies contradicting that point.

Now another study has similarly debunked the argument, with researchers at the University of Washington, Colorado State University and Oregon Social Learning Center finding that the “change in legalization status across adolescence was not significantly related to within-person change in the probability or frequency of self-reported past-year cannabis use.”

The study, which received funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), showed that “youth who spent more of their adolescence under legalization were no more or less likely to have used cannabis at age 15 years than adolescents who spent little or no time under legalization.”



“Taken together with previous studies, these findings add weight to the conclusion that adolescent cannabis use is holding steady in the wake of legalization, at least in the years relatively proximate to the policy change,” the research article says. “This analyses expand on previous findings by specifically parsing variance in adolescent cannabis use owing to age, sex, birth cohort (i.e., population-level trends in use), and legalization.”

“Findings are not consistent with changes in the prevalence or frequency of adolescent cannabis use after legalization.”

This builds on an already sizable body of scientific literature that’s similarly determined that creating regulated cannabis markets for adults either has a neutral effect on underage use, or is even associated with declines in the behavior.

For example, another federally funded study from Michigan State University researchers that was published in the journal PLOS One this summer found that “cannabis retail sales might be followed by the increased occurrence of cannabis onsets for older adults” in legal states, “but not for underage persons who cannot buy cannabis products in a retail outlet.”

Meanwhile, adolescent marijuana use in Colorado declined significantly in 2021, according to the latest version of a biennial state survey released in June.

“When we do look at our study along with the other studies that have asked similar questions, the pattern of results so far is encouraging,” University of Washington’s Jennifer Bailey, author of the new NIDA-funded study, told Marijuana Moment. “That is, most studies are not showing increases in teen cannabis use following legalization of cannabis for adults.”

She cautioned, however, that “we need to keep monitoring teen cannabis use in the wake of legalization.”

“Although things look encouraging now, as we note in our paper, alcohol use increased slowly over 40 years after the end of alcohol prohibition,” she said. “So, it may take more time for us to see any effects of legalization on teen cannabis use. Hopefully, trends will continue as they are going now.”

Advocates have long argued that providing regulated access to marijuana at stores where there are requirements to check ID, for example, would mitigate the risk of adolescent consumption.

A recent study out of California found that “there was 100 percent compliance with the ID policy to keep underage patrons from purchasing marijuana directly from licensed outlets.”

The Coalition for Cannabis Policy, Education, and Regulation (CPEAR), an alcohol and tobacco industry-backed marijuana policy group, also released a report this year analyzing data on youth marijuana use rates amid the state-level legalization movement.

One of the most recent federally funded surveys on the topic stressed that youth marijuana use “decreased significantly” in 2021, as did teen consumption of illicit substances overall.

The 2020 federally funded Monitoring the Future survey further found that cannabis consumption among adolescents “did not significantly change in any of the three grades for lifetime use, past 12-month use, past 30-day use, and daily use from 2019-2020.”

Another federally funded study, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), was released in October showing that youth marijuana use dropped in 2020 amid the coronavirus pandemic and as more states moved to enact legalization.

Further, an analysis published by the Journal of the American Medical Association last year found that enacting legalization has an overall impact on adolescent cannabis consumption that is “statistically indistinguishable from zero.”

The U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics also analyzed youth surveys of high school students from 2009 to 2019 and concluded that there’s been “no measurable difference” in the percentage of those in grades 9-12 who reported consuming cannabis at least once in the past 30 days.

In a separate, earlier analysis, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that marijuana consumption among high school students declined during the peak years of state-legal recreational cannabis legalization.

There was “no change” in the rate of current cannabis use among high school students from 2009-2019, the survey found. When analyzed using a quadratic change model, however, lifetime marijuana consumption decreased during that period.

Another study released by Colorado officials in 2020 showed that youth cannabis consumption in the state “has not significantly changed since legalization” in 2012, though methods of consumption are diversifying.

An official with the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy’s National Marijuana Initiative went even further in 2020, admitting that, for reasons that are unclear, youth consumption of cannabis “is going down” in Colorado and other legalized states and that it’s “a good thing” even if “we don’t understand why.”

 

[Baron23]

Politics​

Schumer Makes ‘Last Ditch Effort’ To Put Marijuana Banking In Spending Bill, Shares Revised Text With GOP Members To Address Concerns​

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is “making a last ditch effort” to put marijuana banking reform in forthcoming omnibus appropriations legislation, a senior Senate Democratic aide told Marijuana Moment on Friday.

With time running short in the lame duck session, there’s been a concerted push to use the spending package as the vehicle for the Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act. Lawmakers failed to secure a deal to attach the reform to a must-pass defense bill last week, leaving them with limited legislative options.

There are some GOP senators who’ve expressed support for moving the cannabis banking proposal, either as part of large-scale legislation or as a standalone, but other key players like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) represent major obstacles.

Negotiations were partly complicated after a Justice Department memo from earlier this year surfaced in a report, revealing that DOJ had some concerns about possible unintended consequences of enacting SAFE Banking. That prompted several Republican senators to hold a meeting with the department last week.

On Thursday, Democrats shared revised SAFE Banking text with Republicans that “addresses DOJ implementation and money laundering concerns,” the top staffer told Marijuana Moment and other news outlets on Friday. “Democrats have also presented language aimed at addressing the issue of legacy cash.”

After Politico reported on Schumer’s renewed efforts to put the banking legislation in omnibus appropriations, Cornyn shared the article and said that it’s “irresponsible to do this without a federal regulatory framework to address public health and law enforcement issues.” He added that senators “take an oath to uphold the law, not ignore it.”




The comment almost makes it sound as if he’s suggesting that marijuana should be federally legalized before Congress passes the more modest banking reform for the industry, but that would represent a significant policy shift for the Republican senator who’s strongly opposed ending prohibition.

The majority leader, meanwhile, is “expected to push for including the revised bill at the leaders level in omni negotiations,” the senior aide said. However, it’s “unclear” if McConnell will move to block the reform despite Democrats’ work to resolve various GOP concerns, they added.

McConnell applauded the exclusion of SAFE Banking from the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) bill last week, has repeatedly signaled that he’d fight against attempts to advance it through appropriations as well.

Meanwhile, Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK), a co-sponsor of the Senate SAFE Banking Act, told The Hill that the issue has “got to be addressed,” and he’s been “trying to make the case to my conference that this is not some kind of crazy bill. It’s a bill about safety and small businesses.”

“My support for SAFE Banking relates to the first word in the bill. It’s called ‘SAFE.’ This is a public safety issue,” Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT), a prime sponsor of the bill, told the outlet. “For states that have legalized cannabis, this is a way you can make a community safe—by taking the cash off the street and put it in the bank.”

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), meanwhile, seemed to align himself more closely with the position of Cornyn.

“It seems odd that we would create a legal construct for something that’s federally prohibited,” he said. “If you want me to be sympathetic to states that have legalized it, contrary to federal law, that have a banking problem, let’s look at the broader issues that would have to be part of federal policy.”

Separately, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Sherrod Brown (D-OH) signaled on Thursday that marijuana banking reform might be on hold until the next Congress in 2023, rather than passed during the lame duck session as advocates and stakeholders had hoped.

However, Brown’s office told Marijuana Moment that the senator still would like to see the reform included in omnibus appropriations legislation this year so long as it contains additional provisions that he supports.

Asked about the Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act, the senator told Punchbowl News’s Brendan Pederson on Thursday that he expects to “take it up and get it through” in 2023, adding that “there’s interest in the Republican House.”

Brown also expressed interest in the expanded SAFE Plus bill that Senate leadership has been finalizing because it’s expected to go beyond simple banking reform and also contain other provisions dealing with expungements and more.

The new 2023 comments seemed to depart from what Brown said in an interview that aired on Monday, with the senator insisting that a deal with banking included “absolutely could still happen,” and lawmakers were “this close to a deal,” placing his thumb and index fingers about an inch apart.

With Republicans set to reclaim a House majority in the next Congress, the idea that SAFE Banking has a clearer pathway in 2023 versus 2022 with Democrats currently in control of both chambers is questionable. The reform does enjoy strong bipartisan support, but it’s not clear that GOP leadership in the House will prioritize it, much less go along with an expanded version that contains the expungements components that Brown and others have pushed to include.

SAFE Banking sponsor Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-CO), meanwhile, has made abundantly clear that he’s unwilling to give up the push and will continue to seek the bill’s passage before his retirement at the end of the 117th Congress.

A staffer in Perlmutter’s office told Marijuana Moment on Wednesday that while there’s uncertainty about advancing cannabis banking reform through the omnibus spending bill, the congressman “is still pushing as hard as he can and talking to leadership.”

Perlmutter said at a House Rules Committee meeting on Tuesday that SAFE Banking is one of two “outstanding matters that I’m still working on.” After the reform was left out of NDAA last week, he said he was looking at appropriations as an alternative vehicle, but at this point he said he’s just intent on adding it to “something.”

With each day that passes in the lame duck, there’s growing frustration and anxiety among advocates and stakeholders, some of whom feel that this may be the last chance in the short-term to get marijuana banking enacted before Republicans reclaim the majority in the House starting on January 3.

For his part, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) has pinned blame on McConnell, telling NJ.com that his vocal opposition to cannabis reform has had a chilling effect of GOP members who might otherwise be amenable to passing legislation that contains SAFE Banking language.

“They’re dead set on anything in marijuana,” he said, referring to Republican leadership. “That to me is the obstacle.”

“The caucus is clearly divided but the people in power in their caucus are clearly against doing anything on marijuana,” he added.

Last week, SAFE Banking sponsor Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) said that he will “keep fighting” to get the reform “passed this year,” adding that “this is not the end of the road.”

“We need to make sure that legal cannabis businesses have access to the financial services they need—operating in cash is an open door to robbery and money laundering,” he said. That’s also a point highlighted in a recent analysis that looked at the trends and motivations for crimes targeting cannabis businesses in Washington State.

One senator who could make or break the final SAFE deal in appropriations is Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), who was among the small group of senators who met with DOJ to seek assurances that issues it raised over SAFE Banking in its earlier memo have been effectively resolved.

Meanwhile, Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), who will serve as Senate president pro tempore for the 118th Congress, is also pushing for passage of the cannabis banking reform during the lame duck, which she discussed at a leadership briefing with Schumer last week.

Murray said that Democrats have made significant progress on a number of issues, even with the slimmest possible majority in the Senate. She said that “we are not done yet,” and there are areas of bipartisan consensus that can still advance before the end of the session, which includes “making sure our legal cannabis businesses can access credit.”

Whether SAFE or SAFE Plus makes it into the forthcoming appropriations deal is yet to be seen. But it’s far from the only cannabis reform that advocates are hoping to see included in the final package delivered to the president’s desk.

The various appropriations bills that the House and Senate considered or advanced this year contain provisions ranging from protecting state marijuana programs from federal interference to removing the congressional blockade that’s prevented Washington, D.C. to implement a system of regulated cannabis sales for adults.

 

[Baron23]

Cannabis Industry faces sobering 2023 ​

Glimmers of hope still exist, particularly as new markets come online. Without much meaningful development concerning legalization efforts in 2022, many sobering themes likely will carry over into 2023.​

Layoffs will persist, and continued price compression and competition from the illicit channels will drive brand share consolidation in mature markets. West Coast legacy operators will continue to be bogged down by legislative limbo, a lack of access to banking services, and an incredibly competitive gray market unbound by onerous tax regulations – which, in turn, will lead to more operators fleeing the troubled market.

Additionally, companies will shift toward tighter capital management and budgeting as cash becomes more expensive and harder to grab.

“Painfully, we will see more cannabis businesses fail,” said Poseidon Asset Management managing director Patrick Rea. “This culling will thin the competitive herd and hand more power to the established incumbents – increasingly MSOs – with their lower cost of capital and growing footprint of assets and operations.”

There are reasons for hope, though.

New and emerging adult-use markets in the Northeast region, as well as the Florida medical market, should show considerable growth next year.

That’s bolstered by increasing market access. Half of the U.S. population over the age of 21 now have access or live in a state that has adult-use legal, with more than half recorded as past six-month consumers, according to BDSA analyst Brendan Mitchel-Chesebro.

“Even though there’s still these problems with price compression, even though there’re still regulatory issues – people waiting for SAFE Act to pass, people waiting for 280E reform – there’s still a lot of reasons why we think that there’s going to be huge growth in a lot of these markets,” he said.

Likely Winners​

Many in the industry remain bullish on Florida, especially as it gears up for a well-funded adult-use ballot initiative push for 2024. BDSA believes Florida will be the biggest contributor to sales growth nationally through 2026, with $2.7 billion in projected medical sales next year.

New York could also emerge as one of the biggest growth opportunities in 2023, though the state’s ability to get more adult-use retail stores up and running will be the greatest indicator of progress – as looming sticker shock awaits legal enterprises.

“In our opinion, that’s the thing that would effectively cut into the illicit market the most, and that’s why some markets that have been up and running for a few years are still having problems with (the gray market),” Mitchel-Chesebro said.

In the Midwest, Missouri shows promise for MSOs and big vertical out-of-state operators. Friendly state taxes, good product split backed by a maturing retail footprint, and a smooth compliance process could make the difference in the Show-Me State.

Additionally, cross-border traffic from Arkansas and Kansas, which have fallen short on their own legalization efforts, should beef up sales in the new market, which is expected to launch in February.

Cy Scott, CEO of cannabis data firm Headset, expects Missouri’s adult-use rollout to put additional pressure on the Illinois market to accelerate license grants, given the number of already-licensed medical dispensaries converting to adult-use locations.

If the rollout is successful, BDSA predicts around $270 million-$280 million in adult-use sales in 2023. Factoring in the maturing medical market, Missouri could very well reach $730 million in total legal sales.

More Normalization​

The New Year also could see additional normalization from consumption lounges and bigger retail shifts to raise foot traffic and basket size, Mitchel-Chesebro said.

Dispensaries could begin to move away from the “deli layout” in favor of a more open retail floorplan similar to Apple stores. The BDSA analyst pointed to places like Planet 13, where employees are on the floor to assist shoppers, yet customers can move and browse around and check out display cases on their own.

“I think that that’s going to be a big shift when we’re talking about storefront retail,” Mitchel-Chesebro said. “I think that a lot of people recognize that it is more approachable, especially for newer consumers.”

Still, convenience is king in the industry, which should see a stronger push toward direct consumer sales utilizing delivery and curbside pickup services.

‘The Missing Component is Capital’​

Morgan Paxhia, co-founder and managing partner of Poseidon Asset Management, said this year is poised to be “the most bifurcated trajectories we have seen in the legal cannabis industry.”

Paxhia predicts a year full of the most defaults, wind downs, and state-level bankruptcies the legal cannabis industry has ever seen – especially with the sobering lull in meaningful federal banking legislation.

“We see this cycle finally coming to a head as the tight capital markets have persisted for so long combined with onerous cannabis taxes, deflationary cannabis prices and inflationary costs,” he said. “This cycle was well on its way and COVID interrupted it, like many other industries. We think most of this stress is within smaller companies.”

However, Paxhia also sees a healthy return of M&A for many areas of cannabis, too, such as operators, ancillary technologies, and hydroponics. “We see this driven by companies continuing to seek operating efficiencies, scale, and stronger competitive footprints.

“We see that inward, digestion period running its course and companies getting back on offense,” he said. “We also wouldn’t rule out activity, not likely M&A activity per se, with mainstream strategies, like alcohol, tobacco, CPG.”

A meaningful return of equity capital flows after a long protracted bear market is also possible, likely benefiting the largest companies first due to lower perceived risk.

“Big picture, we know more now than ever about how to run a successful legal cannabis company. There are more experienced operators than ever. There are more legal states than ever,” Rea noted.

“The missing component is capital.”

 

[Baron23]

Majority Of American Voters—Including Most Republicans—Back Federal Marijuana Legalization And Social Equity, New Survey Finds

A strong majority of American voters—including most Republicans, Democrats and independents—support legalizing marijuana and the federal level, according to a new poll. And majorities also back policies meant to promote equity in the industry.


The survey from Data for Progress found that 65 percent of Americans are in favor of federally legalizing cannabis—a finding that’s consistent with numerous polls that have been conducted over recent years.

There’s support for the reform across the political spectrum, with 75 percent of Democrats, 67 percent of independents and 52 percent of Republicans agreeing that cannabis prohibition should end.


Data for Progress also asked about two key equity policies that were enacted as part of New York’s marijuana legalization law: one that sets aside the initial round of cannabis business licenses for people who’ve been disproportionately harmed by the drug war and another that allocates a portion of marijuana tax revenue for community reinvestment.


About half of the total respondents in the survey were asked if the former policy should be adopted nationally if cannabis is federally legalized and the rest were asked about the latter.


For the licensing prioritization question, 57 percent said that they’d like to see licenses reserved for “individuals from communities that were disproportionately impacted by the enforcement of cannabis prohibition,” as is mandated under New York’s program.


That includes 69 percent of Democrats, 59 percent of independents and 43 percent of Republicans.


Meanwhile, 65 percent of likely voters are in favor of the other proposal to direct a sizable portion of cannabis tax revenue to a grant fund for non-profit sand governments to support “community-based initiative programs, such as job placement and skill services, substance use treatment programs, and financial literacy courses.”


There’s bipartisan support for that policy, including 76 percent of Democrats, 70 percent of independents and 51 percent of Republicans.


“Our poll shows that voters are ready for the U.S. government to finally legalize the adult use of recreational marijuana,” Data for Progress said in its analysis of the results. “It also shows that when the U.S. government does legalize recreational marijuana, voters support passing equitable policies with it that aid minority communities, including reserving dispensary licenses for individuals affected by cannabis prohibition and diverting portions of marijuana revenue to community grant funds.”


“It is time for the U.S. government to right its previous wrongs from the failed ‘War on Drugs’ and legalize recreational marijuana while giving back to those communities who were heavily affected,” the organization said.


The first part of the survey on federal legalization involved interviews with 1,228 likely voters from December 22-27, with a +/- 3 percentage point margin of error. The licensing question was put to 620 of those respondents, while 606 were asked about the grant fund proposal.


In November, Data for Progress released a separate poll that additional found that roughly three in four Americans, again including bipartisan majorities, back expunging prior cannabis convictions and allowing banks to work with state-legal marijuana businesses.


The organization also put out a survey last year that showed 52 percent of Americans agreed strongly or somewhat with the idea that “people of color are unfairly punished for possession of marijuana compared to white people.” However, only one in four Republicans agreed with that statement.

 

[Baron23]

First Marijuana Bill Of The New Congress Is A GOP-Led Gun Rights Measure​

Republican House lawmakers have filed the first piece of marijuana reform legislation for the 118th Congress, proposing to allow medical cannabis patients to purchase and possess firearms.


Rep. Alex Mooney (R-WV) introduced the bill, which appears to be the same as a measure originally filed in 2019 that did not advance. It’s being cosponsored by Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), who is a co-chair of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus, and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) .


While the full text isn’t yet available, the bill shares the short title of the “Second Amendment Protection Act” that Mooney filed in the 116th Congress. It’s unclear if it’s been amended from that version.


But as the title explains, the measure seeks to amend federal statute as it concerns the “sale, purchase, shipment, receipt, or possession of a firearm or ammunition by a user of medical marijuana.”


As it stands, people who use cannabis—even as a patient in compliance with state law—are barred from purchasing or possessing guns because they’re considered “an unlawful user of or addicted to” a federally controlled substance.


The earlier version of the bill said that people who use illegal controlled substances still wouldn’t be able to obtain a firearm—“except that an individual shall not be treated as an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance based on the individual using marihuana for a medical purpose in accordance with state law.”


To enforce the current prohibition, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) includes the following question on a form that must be filled out prior to most gun purchases:


“Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance? Warning: the use or possession of marijuana remains unlawful under Federal law regardless of whether it has been legalized or decriminalized for medical or recreational purposes in the state where you reside.”


Massie spoke to Marijuana Moment about the need for gun-focused cannabis reform in 2019, previewing plans to back legislation to end the existing policy for patients.


The prohibition has been widely criticized on a bipartisan basis, with advocates, lawmakers and state officials arguing that the ban unduly discriminates against marijuana patients and forces them to either forfeit a constitutional right or obtain firearms through other, potentially illegal channels.


Another bill that was filed last Congress by the late Rep. Don Young (R-AK), who Mast replaced as a GOP co-chair of the Cannabis Caucus, would have protected the Second Amendment right of any lawful marijuana consumer and not just patients.


The Gun Rights and Marijuana (GRAM) Act would have added a short provision to federal law specifying that “the term ‘unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance’ shall not include a person by reason of unlawful use or addiction to marijuana.”


The exemption would have applied only to people who live in a state or tribal jurisdiction that permits the use of marijuana by adults, and only if they do not violate the local cannabis laws laws.


There was discussion of including the reform as part of a package of incremental marijuana reforms know as “SAFE Plus” that bipartisan and bicameral lawmakers had hoped to advance during the lame duck session last year. But that didn’t materialize.


Florida’s then-agriculture commissioner Nikki Fried led an effort to sue the federal government in hopes to securing firearms rights for medical cannabis patients, but a district court judge dismissed it in November after months of back-and-forth. Fried has since appealed the decision.


As Fried previously told Marijuana Moment, the lawsuit wasn’t about expanding gun rights, per se. It was a matter of constitutionality that she and other key allies in the gun reform movement feel would bolster public safety if the case ultimately goes in their favor.


In 2020, ATF issued an advisory specifically targeting Michigan that requires gun sellers to conduct federal background checks on all unlicensed gun buyers because it said the state’s cannabis laws had enabled “habitual marijuana users” and other disqualified individuals to obtain firearms illegally.

 

[momofthegoons]

FDA Releases Final Guidance For Cannabis Drug Development As Advocates Await Hemp And CBD Rules​

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has released its finalized guidance on developing cannabis-based drugs, outlining the process and unique considerations for scientists when it comes to hemp and marijuana.

The guidance—titled “Cannabis and Cannabis-Derived Compounds: Quality Considerations for Clinical Research”—was announced in a notice set to be published in the Federal Register on Tuesday. The agency previously released a draft version that went through a White House review in 2020.

Part of the reason for the guidance is the federal legalization of hemp in the 2018 Farm Bill, which makes the drug development protocol different for that version of the cannabis crop than it is for marijuana, which remains in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA).

“This guidance outlines FDA’s current thinking on several topics relevant to the development of cannabis and cannabis-derived human drugs, including the source of cannabis for clinical research,” FDA said. “This guidance is being issued to support clinical research for development of cannabis and cannabis-derived human drugs.”

FDA made several non-binding recommendations for researchers interested in developing cannabis drugs that could go to market. The advice is “intended to address the legal definitions and regulatory controls related to cannabis, and to address certain questions raised about drugs containing cannabis.”



The guidance has been revised since the draft version’s release. It adds clarity around federally authorized sources of cannabis for drug development purposes, for example.

As a general rule, cannabis containing no more than 0.3 percent THC by dry weight meets the federal definition of hemp and is not considered a controlled substance like marijuana, which continues to fall under the purview of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

To that end, there’s more flexibility as it concerns sourcing federally legal hemp. Such products don’t need to come from the limited number of National Institute on Drug Abuse- (NIDA) contracted suppliers for marijuana as long as they are “deemed to be of adequate quality by FDA.”

The agency points out that for “many years,” scientists could only get marijuana from one NIDA-approved farm at the University of Mississippi. DEA has since accepted more manufacturers, giving researchers “new sourcing option” as they pursue cannabis research.

There’s also a new section of the guidance that addresses calculating THC to distinguish hemp from marijuana. FDA largely defers to DEA on the matter, but it also advises researchers to “calculate the delta-9 THC content in their proposed cannabis or cannabis-derived investigational drug product early in the development process to gain insight into their product’s potential abuse liability and control status.”

Early analysis may prove “useful,” but FDA noted that, “even if the starting materials meet the definition of hemp, intermediates or drug products that contain greater than 0.3 percent delta-9 THC by dry weight may no longer meet the definition of hemp and may be considered Schedule I controlled substances.”

Farmers and researchers have highlighted that concern and called for additional flexibility for the total THC concentration, as even environmental factors can affect THC levels and potentially push a legal crop into a controlled substance territory. Extraction and other manufacturing processes can also inadvertently influence final THC concentration.

Overall, FDA’s guidance is meant to walk people through its regulatory mechanisms and explain how investigational new drugs work. It details basic standards for clinical studies, how combustable drug products differ from oral preparations, storage requirements for researchers and more.

Meanwhile, advocates, lawmakers and stakeholders are still waiting to see what actions, if any, FDA will take to allow for the marketing of hemp-based products like CBD oil in the food supply or as dietary supplements.

Rep. James Comer (R-KY), who chairs the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, said recently that he plans to take FDA officials to task over their failure to enact regulations to allow for such marketing.

Late last year, top officials at the agency said they are months away from releasing a regulatory assessment on the issue, though FDA has maintained that it may take additional legislative work before it’s able to finalize such rules.

FDA officials have said that a couple of points that they are assessing concern whether CBD can be used safely in the long-term, and what impacts consumption might have during pregnancy. The rise in popularity of delta-8 THC products, which the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) says are not controlled substances, has further complicated rulemaking.

FDA recently touted its role helping a state agency crack down on a company selling delta-8 THC gummies that they said are linked to “serious adverse events.”

In November, the agency sent warning letters to five companies that sell foods and beverages containing CBD.

The agency didn’t specify why it targeted those particular five companies out of the many more that market similar cannabidiol-infused consumables, but it said that they sell products “that people may confuse for traditional foods or beverages which may result in unintentional consumption or overconsumption of CBD.”

Reps. Morgan Griffith (R-VA) and Brett Guthrie (R-KY) sent a letter to FDA Commissioner Robert Califf in September, demanding answers over the continued lack of regulations for CBD for those purposes.

Griffith and other bipartisan lawmakers sent a separate, related letter to the FDA commissioner in August. They expressed frustration over the “completely insufficient response” the agency provided in response to their bill calling for hemp-derived CBD to be permitted and regulated as a food additive.

After the CBD Product Safety and Standardization Act was filed in December 2021, the sponsors sought technical assistance from FDA to advise on key provisions. But four months after they sent the inquiry, FDA returned a “one-page” response that was “simply a reformatting of a document provided to Congress over two years ago,” the lawmakers said

At a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing in May, FDA’s Califf recognized that the agency had moved slowly with rulemaking for CBD in the food supply, stating that the situation “looks pretty much the same in terms of where we are now” as compared to when he first worked on the issue in 2016.

He said the FDA has taken steps to research the safety profile of cannabinoids to inform future rules, but he also punted the criticism about inaction to Congress, saying he doesn’t feel that “the current authorities we have on the food side or the drug side necessarily give us what we need to have to get the right pathways forward.”

“We’re going to have to come up with something new,” Califf said. “I’m very committed to doing that.”

All of this comes in the background of a major task for FDA: Conducting a scientific review into marijuana, at the direction of President Joe Biden, to aid in an assessment of its federal scheduling. FDA’s recommendation won’t be binding, but officials say they expect DEA to product a scheduling recommendation that’s consistent with their findings about its risks and benefits.

 

[momofthegoons]

FDA Announces It Will Not Issue Rules To Allow CBD As Dietary Supplements Or Food Items, Punting To Congress For Regulations​

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says that it will not be creating rules to allow the marketing of CBD as dietary supplements or food items, leaving the massive industry without regulations despite repeated calls for administrative action from lawmakers, advocates and stakeholders.

Following a “careful review” of the non-intoxicating cannabinoid, FDA said it reached the conclusion that the existing regulatory pathways that are in place for other dietary supplements and food additives will not work for CBD. Instead, the agency said that wants to “work with Congress on a new way forward.”

In the meantime, FDA is also denying three citizen petitions that had requested rulemaking for the marketing of CBD.

The announcement comes days after the agency released finalized guidance that focuses on developing cannabis-based drugs and outlined the process and unique considerations for scientists when it comes to hemp and marijuana.



FDA isn’t saying that CBD shouldn’t be regulated; rather, it said that certain safety concerns and data gaps make it an administrative impossibility under the current standards.

“A new regulatory pathway would benefit consumers by providing safeguards and oversight to manage and minimize risks related to CBD products,” FDA Principal Deputy Commissioner Janet Woodcock said. “Some risk management tools could include clear labels, prevention of contaminants, CBD content limits, and measures, such as minimum purchase age, to mitigate the risk of ingestion by children. In addition, a new pathway could provide access and oversight for certain CBD-containing products for animals.”



The agency’s emphasis on working with Congress to address the issue legislatively comes as the newly seated chair of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, Rep. James Comer (R-KY), says he is preparing to confront FDA over their failure to enact regulations for hemp-derived products like CBD.

“The FDA’s existing foods and dietary supplement authorities provide only limited tools for managing many of the risks associated with CBD products,” Woodcock said. “Under the law, any substance, including CBD, must meet specific safety standards to be lawfully marketed as a dietary supplement or food additive.”

“The FDA will continue to take action against CBD and other cannabis-derived products to protect the public, in coordination with state regulatory partners, when appropriate. We will remain diligent in monitoring the marketplace, identifying products that pose risks and acting within our authorities. The FDA looks forward to working with Congress to develop a cross-agency strategy for the regulation of these products to protect the public’s health and safety.”



Relatedly, FDA denied citizen petitions for CBD rulemaking from the Council for Responsible Nutrition, Natural Products Association and Consumer Healthcare Products Association.

This is frustrating news for advocates and stakeholders who’ve been strongly pushing FDA to take some regulatory action on hemp-based products like CBD as the market continues to rapidly expand with few guardrails in place.

FDA has faced increased pressure from bipartisan lawmakers and industry groups to do something about the issue since hemp and its derivatives were federally legalized under the 2018 Farm Bill.

It did say in a notice that industry stakeholders cold “provide input regarding this announcement” either by submitting public comment or participating in engagement meetings that it will be hosting over the “next several months.”

Top officials in the agency have previously signaled that they felt it may take work from Congress to adequately regulate CBD.

“It’s likely we will see FDA continue to maintain its non-enforcement approach and deference to the states, except where products have material public safety concerns,” Shawn Hauser, partner at Vicente Sederberg LLP who co-chairs the firm’s Hemp and Cannabinoids Department, told Marijuana Moment.

“Woodcock is clear FDA will maintain its current enforcement approach to protect public safety in coordination with state agencies, where appropriate,” she said. “I expect we will continue to see more robust state regulatory programs governing finished hemp products, including limitations on THC content and synthetics.”

Michael Bronstein, president of the American Trade Association for Cannabis & Hemp (ATACH), said in a press release that “FDA’s findings highlight the increased need for Congressional action as it relates to the regulatory framework of CBD products for use in food, beverage, and as dietary supplements.”

“We will diligently work with Congress to develop and advance a pathway that protects consumers, creates certainty in the marketplace for CBD goods, and provides for sound regulation,” he said.

An FDA cannabis task force FDA assessed concerns about whether CBD can be used safely in the long-term, and what impacts consumption might have during pregnancy. The rise in popularity of delta-8 THC products, which the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) says are not controlled substances, has further complicated rulemaking.



Reps. Morgan Griffith (R-VA) and Brett Guthrie (R-KY) sent a letter to FDA Commissioner Robert Califf in September, demanding answers over the continued lack of regulations for CBD for those purposes.

Griffith and other bipartisan lawmakers sent a separate, related letter to the FDA commissioner in August. They expressed frustration over the “completely insufficient response” the agency provided in response to their bill calling for hemp-derived CBD to be permitted and regulated as a food additive.

After the CBD Product Safety and Standardization Act was filed in December 2021, the sponsors sought technical assistance from FDA to advise on key provisions. But four months after they sent the inquiry, FDA returned a “one-page” response that was “simply a reformatting of a document provided to Congress over two years ago,” the lawmakers said

At a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing in May, FDA’s Califf recognized that the agency had moved slowly with rulemaking for CBD in the food supply, stating that the situation “looks pretty much the same in terms of where we are now” as compared to when he first worked on the issue in 2016.

He said the FDA has taken steps to research the safety profile of cannabinoids to inform future rules, but he also punted the criticism about inaction to Congress, saying he doesn’t feel that “the current authorities we have on the food side or the drug side necessarily give us what we need to have to get the right pathways forward.”

“We’re going to have to come up with something new,” Califf said. “I’m very committed to doing that.”

FDA also recently touted its role helping a state agency crack down on a company selling delta-8 THC gummies that they said are linked to “serious adverse events.”

In November, the agency sent warning letters to five companies that sell foods and beverages containing CBD.

The agency didn’t specify why it targeted those particular five companies out of the many more that market similar cannabidiol-infused consumables, but it said that they sell products “that people may confuse for traditional foods or beverages which may result in unintentional consumption or overconsumption of CBD.”

All of this comes in the background of a major task for FDA: Conducting a scientific review into marijuana, at the direction of President Joe Biden, to aid in an assessment of its federal scheduling. FDA’s recommendation won’t be binding, but officials say they expect DEA to product a scheduling recommendation that’s consistent with their findings about its risks and benefits.

 

[momofthegoons]

Booker Laments ‘Cannabis Crisis’ Of Prohibition, Laying Out Marijuana Banking Challenges In New Congress​

Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) says that ongoing marijuana banking issues under prohibition amount to a “cannabis crisis,” and while he thinks there’s still a shot to enact reform with Republicans in control of the House, he’s underscoring the challenges of the new political dynamic on Capitol Hill.

Advocates and stakeholders remain frustrated that Congress was unable to pass a marijuana banking bill and other modest reforms last session when Democrats held majorities in both chambers. But eyes are now turned to what’s achievable in the 118th Congress.

Booker told NJ.com that it’s his “intention to try to drive it as far as we can go, but the dynamics have shifted pretty dramatically” with the House flip. He said enacting reform is “definitely going to be harder, but not impossible.”

“I do think there’s a chance. Remember there’s always been a good bipartisan coalition of people that want to do something,” the senator said. “The urgencies that pushed us towards some kind of partnership are still there, on the business side as well as the restorative justice side.”

Booker has faced particular criticism from certain stakeholders over how his position on banking legislation has evolved, with the senator at one point vowing to block any efforts to advance a standalone Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act without equity components but eventually expressing interest in compromise to get something done.

He remains committed to incorporating equity into legislation he plans to work on this session, but the task is steeper without Democratic control of the House.

The senator said in an earlier interview following last year’s election that he believed it could take “many years from now” to pass cannabis legislation if Democrats didn’t get the job done during the lame duck session.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who led negotiations over the so-called SAFE Plus package, has faulted Republicans for keeping the proposal out of key legislationthat he’d hoped to attach it to last session.

Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC), who now serves as chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said last month that while he still opposes the banking proposal, he wouldn’t stand in its way.

The White House was asked last week where President Joe Biden stands on marijuana banking reform, and Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that the ball is in Congress’s court, with no current plans for administrative action to resolve the issue.

Biden hasn’t provided a clear policy position on marijuana banking, though he’s said that states should be able to decide their own cannabis laws without federal interference. His administration has also become more vocal marijuana reform since the president issued a mass cannabis possession pardon in October.