The legalization of recreational marijuana through Proposition 207 in 2020 opened a lot of doors for people with past low-level marijuana convictions.

Nowadays, thousands of people have already applied for expungement under the voter-passed initiative, but not everyone can get their charges tossed out, including a Phoenix entrepreneur who says the same cannabis industry that is bringing in big money today almost cost him everything a decade ago.

"On my record right now, I have 15 total felony convictions from 1996 to now. It's all pot-related," said Martin.

The problem was: Martin was not partnered with a licensed dispensary and the police came knocking.

"It was all police," Martin recounted. "Four jurisdictions, and guns held in my kids' faces for a plant that's supposed to save my life."

In what it describes as a month of climate action, Blac Sneaker Company is donating funds with each hemp sneaker purchase to have trees planted on its behalf.

Relatively new on the footwear scene, Blac Sneaker Company was established in 2019 with a goal of creating simple, stylish sneakers for everyday wear that minimise environmental impact in their production.

“We believe good quality and comfortable sneakers provide the perfect balance between sustainable, durable, useable and practical,” says the company. “These elements are important when designing a shoe that has a positive impact on society whether it be through the materials used or contribution to communities.”

Every year around Halloween time, rumors will start to creep up about “marijuana-laced” Halloween candy. Should parents be worried about there being truth behind the rumors?

Some older stories stem from the 1950s that people would “heat pennies on skillets and put them into the hands of trick-or-treaters.” This eventually turned into stories about “arsenic and pins” ending up in children’s candy in the 1960s.

This could be where the fear of marijuana-laced candy came from, but these instances can now be considered ancient Halloween sadism, according to Joel Best, the nation’s top researcher on Halloween candy contamination.

When looking further into information about marijuana-laced candy on Halloween, there have never been any real cases of it showing up in a trick-or-treater’s possession. 

“I’ve done the research, and I can’t find any evidence that any child has been killed or seriously hurt by any candy picked up in the course of trick-or-treating. My view is this is overblown. You can’t prove a negative, but it seems unlikely,” Best told Vox.

Once the bill is signed into law, Panama will be in a somewhat odd situation: It will gave a legal regime for medical cannabis, but not one for hemp.

Back in October 2019, Deputy Kayra Harding introduced a bill (Proyecto de Ley No. 323) to promote the development of the hemp industry in Panama. The bill would establish a licensing regime for hemp cultivation and processing. Hemp is defined as cannabis whose THC content does not exceed 1.5% on a dry weight basis. However, legislative consideration of the bill has been slow.

Last October, government and legislative representatives agreed to establish a subcommission to “enrich” the bill. According to commentator Rafael Carles, it is ignorance when it comes to hemp and how it differs from marijuana that is behind the delays. At the same time, there are concerns within the Panamanian citizenry that the development of the hemp industry will only advance powerful business interests. These two explanations are not mutually exclusive, as demonstrated by this reader comment on a recent Carles column:

“Beware Panama! Now entrepreneurs want to make a profit from your vices, it is not just alcohol and beer. Now it is with drugs, but with a different name, calling the marijuana plant hemp.”

It does not help that Panama’s medical cannabis legalization has been tainted by accusations of corruption. According to one report, Canadian company Canna Med Panama, SA “was not only attentive to the debates in the National Assembly to approve Bill 153, which seeks to regulate the use of medicinal cannabis, but also sponsored a trip to Louisiana by five officials, some key in making decisions about the future business of the use of cannabis for medicinal purposes.”

Photo by Francisco Rioseco via Unsplash

Oklahoma, Colorado and Missouri allow sale of pot for health purposes.

Advocates of legalizing marijuana sales formed the Kansas Cannabis Chamber of Commerce to move the political, business and health debate forward in a state bordered by dispensaries in Colorado, Oklahoma and Missouri and a renewed push to open markets in Nebraska.

The Kansas House overwhelmingly approved a bill during the 2021 session that would have created a highly regulated medical cannabis structure, but it wasn’t taken up by the Kansas Senate. Gov. Laura Kelly said she would sign medical marijuana legislation, if the Legislature sent a package to her desk. Polling last year indicated two-thirds of Kansas adults supported legalization of marijuana sales.

Heather Steppe, president of the new chamber of commerce, said the idea was to model the business organization on the array of groups that formed industry coalitions to press for government policy reform. She said Kansas should avoid being left out in the cold as dozens of states moved on with development of industries to grow, manufacture, transport and market cannabis for medicinal benefit.

“We’re not inventing the wheel,” Steppe said. “We’re just trying to, you know, grease it up and get it working for Kansas.”

Marijuana is legal for some or all adults in more than half of U.S. states. As the cannabis industry takes off, it has the potential to deliver a product with minimal environmental impact. Hemp packaging may help make those sales sustainable rather than leading to more harmful waste.

The cannabis industry is currently the fastest-growing industry in the U.S. In the last year, Americans spent more money buying cannabis than wine. While marijuana has been legalized in many states, it still hasn’t been legalized at the federal level. This means that there are few federal regulations regarding ethical trade and transportation of cannabis products.

The thriving and consistently crowded industrial real estate market has recently had to accommodate an increasing number of cannabis growing and processing plants in the municipalities that allow them.

However, in many cases, cannabis construction in these municipalities has led to the multi-million-dollar rehabilitation of obsolete industrial facilities.

Chicago-based Cresco Labs LLC had its first harvest two weeks ago at its newly opened, 110,000-square-foot facility at 210 Oliver Drive in Marshall, the former site of a Win Schuler and Campbell Soup Co. factory. 

Which States Will Legalize Recreational Weed Next?

Gone are the days when predictions on state legislations could be given based on the ruling party. The stereotypical belief of States being red or blue has been tossed out over time, especially in talks regarding cannabis legalization.

Everyone wants a piece of the cake.

There is a long list of states that may be the next to legalize the use, possession, and cultivation of recreational cannabis in the United States of America. While some are going to have to do through the ballot boxes, others may do so through their legislature. The point is these states are after the same thing, which is the establishment of a functioning recreational cannabis industry.

The reluctance of the presidency and the national legislature to decriminalize cannabis has not deterred these states from wanting to join the cannabis organization trend.

Cannabis legalization remains a controversial topic, which is why most politicians are willing to let voters take the lead on the issue, while they follow.

The Wind Of Cannabis Legalization

The United States is at a point where even the masses want cannabis legalized for recreational use. Just this year alone, about four states made marijuana legal. These states include New York, Virginia, Connecticut, New Mexico. This makes the total number of states with recreational laws 19 states.

In a continuing trend across the country whereby cities are taking steps to decriminalize the possession of certain amounts of all kinds of psychedelics, Seattle joined the herd this week by voting to formalize the non-prosecution of the possession of certain entheogens, commonly known as psychedelics. We were especially gratified to see the results of the vote, as John Rapp and Mason Marks from our office have been working hard on this behind the scenes.

Resolution 32021 passed on Monday (see the actual ordinance here), and it basically renders as one of the lowest “law enforcement priorities” the “investigation, arrest, and prosecution of anyone engaging in entheogen-related activities.” More specifically, the ordinance states that:

“. . . the investigation, arrest, and prosecution of anyone engaging in entheogen-related activities, including but not limited to the cultivation of entheogens for use in religious, spiritual, healing, or personal growth practices and the sharing of entheogens with co-practitioners without financial or other consideration, should be among the City of Seattle’s lowest enforcement priorities.”

Almost more importantly, the Council openly indicates in the ordinance its full support behind decriminalization of the foregoing activities and directs the Office of Intergovernmental Relations to add to its 2022 agenda full decriminalization of psychedelics under state law.

“[e]ach of these decriminalization measures is different, but fundamentally they are the same in that they do not actually make psychedelics legal. All they really do is direct law enforcement in those cities to make enforcement of existing criminal laws a low priority, and only then for non-commercial possession and use. Decriminalization measures don’t change state or federal law, and even don’t really change local law.”

Recently introduced legislation in the state House of Representatives would allow school nurses to administer medical marijuana to students.

Current state law allows a parent, guardian or caregiver to come onto school grounds to administer medical marijuana to students during the school day. Parents have to provide the school principal with a Safe Harbor Letter, notify the school principal in advance of each instance when the parent or caregiver will administer medical marijuana to their child, with the principal in turn notifying the school nurse.

State guidance stipulates parents have to follow all school protocols that apply to school visitors, administer the medical marijuana without creating a distraction and promptly remove any medical marijuana and materials from the school grounds. Schools are also required to provide a secure and private location for the parent to administer medical marijuana to their child. Students are not allowed to possess any form of medical marijuana on school grounds or during school activities on school property.

Kenyatta’s bill would authorize school nurses to administer medical marijuana and waive a caregiver fee if a nurse is administering the marijuana instead of a parent.

The bill has been referred to the House Health Committee, which is chaired by Rep. Kathy Rapp, R-Warren.

The El Paso Police Department is looking to ask City Council to raise its budget by $72,000 next year to allow the department to test marijuana cases at a lab."Marijuana and hemp are very much so identical one of the only characteristics that differs hemp from marijuana is the amount of THC," said Sgt. Robert Gomez, an EPPD spokesman. The difference between marijuana and hemp products is the level of THC in them. In Texas, the legal quantity for THC is 0.3% anything more and it gets qualified as illegal. The major problem not only for EPPD - but also for other police departments across the state - is distinguishing illegal marijuana from legal hemp, and only a lab can make that determination.

"Any amount of THC was illegal in the past, so really the testing was more simple: it was more present or not present. So now that we have to have a specific amount of THC to classify as an illegal substance more quantitative testing needs to be done," Gomez said.

The proposal to City Council is to increase the police budget by $360,000 over the next five years as part of a contract with a lab.

"It has to do with arresting practices, it has to do with the law change - what the law requires for us to seek prosecution. So that is really what this increase in the budget is - it doesn't mean that we are arresting more or not, it just means that the evidence we have to present has to be within the law, which in turn costs more," Gomez explained.

"DPS is still not testing small amounts of marijuana, therefore, these cases cannot be prosecuted without
the lab results as they are the key evidence to obtaining a conviction," Paul Ferris, a spokesperson for the District Attorney's Office said. "The few labs that exist for testing drug cases have indicated that the priority for testing will be the big marijuana cases, and if there is funding available after testing these bigger drug cases, then they will begin testing the smaller cases."

When Wisconsin legalized hemp, sales of CBD products took off. Now there is a new hemp byproduct that is growing in popularity. It's called delta-8 THC. It's sold like CBD but its effects are similar to marijuana.

"Will it get you high? Basically, yes," said Rachel Cartwright, owner of CBD Therapeutics of Wisconsin.

You can get delta-8 in candies, oils and vapes, and sales are booming across Wisconsin.

"Three quarters of my telephone calls, do you sell delta-8? Do you sell delta-8?" said Dan Sebring, who owns The Real Milwaukee CBD.

But how is it legal? Well, it's complicated. In Wisconsin, hemp-derived products are legal as long as they contain less than 0.3 percent delta-9 THC. Delta-8 THC is also found in hemp and is not explicitly prohibited.

Nearly three years after Missouri voters legalized medical marijuana across the state, the cannabis industry in St. Louis appears to be thriving, with state-regulated dispensaries popping up throughout the region. But managing the money side of things has proven a struggle for many distributors and growers — even though their businesses are fully legitimate. That’s because many banks won’t accept their money, or insist on charging them significant fees if they do.

In Passaic, entrepreneurs can grow, manufacture, package, wholesale and, in the newest incarnation of its marijuana ordinance, even deliver cannabis products. They just can't sell it at retail.  "No municipality in the state can prohibit the delivery to homes," Mayor Hector Lora said. Because New Jersey requires cities to allow cannabis delivery, the City Council introduced an amendment to its ordinance Tuesday to make it clear that home delivery is acceptable. The mayor said the city is dotting the i's to make sure its ordinance, which permits the cultivation, manufacturing and wholesaling of cannabis, follows state law.  It has high hopes that it will be able to land cannabis growers and the jobs that should come with such businesses. 

Passaic has set aside the eastern portion of the city around Market Street as an area where it would permit the cultivation, manufacture and wholesale sales of cannabis products. 

Gov. Phil Murphy signed the state's new marijuana legalization rules into law on Feb. 22. According to initial rules established by the state's Cannabis Regulatory Commission, in the first two years after that, New Jersey will issue no more than 37 cultivator licenses, although more licenses will be allowed for "microbusiness cultivators" limited to 1,000 plants and 2,500 square feet of operations.

"There's 12 large and four smaller," he said. "I am confident that we will get one large and one small.At least a dozen people interested in cultivating have contacted the city, the mayor said. Most, however, hadn't done their due diligence. 

"They all went up in smoke," he said.