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Recent Gallup survey showed 68% of people are in favor of legalizing cannabis.

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WVLT) - Some Tennessee lawmakers said this is the year the state needs to legalize medical marijuana. Democratic Rep. Jason Powell presented a resolution to the General Assembly to give the voters the final say.

Rep. Powell said, “We’ve seen a record number of cannabis’ legislation.”

If approved, voters would get the final say on medical marijuana which could change the state’s constitution.

“It’s time for Tennesseans especially those who are suffering and would benefit from medical cannabis,” Rep. Powell said.

This resolution would need 2/3 approval in both the Tennessee House and Senate to go to the November ballot.

This past summer, a little recognized thing occurred — one of the largest and most respected companies in the world quietly changed its policies in favor of cannabis. That company was Apple. As a result, they joined the ranks of Amazon as a global corporation advocating for policy reform that would open a federally legal, commercial cannabis industry in the United States.   

Unlike the big headlines we’ve seen recently from Amazon, Uber, the NFL, and other mainstream, institutional businesses, showing a positively changing attitude toward cannabis, Apple made no big-splash announcement that this had happened. Yet, this change came at a time of a shift in the cannabis paradigm for voters, policymakers, and the average American. 

The financial technology experts at Artis Intel are ahead of the curve in identifying the imperative to collaborate with tech leaders like Apple to update policy to reflect the mainstream adoption of cannabis. Co-Founder and CMO of Artis, Adair Lion shares, “As a fintech company on the cutting-edge of development in both cannabis and retail, Apple’s Policy changes are a monumental shift in the way our society does mobile transactions.”  

Then political leaders and Fortune 100 companies begin modifying policies and behavior to accommodate something that has been seen as fringe, elicit, or otherwise illegal, the hearts and minds of American start to change. It’s safe to say the tide is turning. 

Three years after it was formed, the Michigan Marijuana Regulatory Agency is getting a new name. 

The agency will be renamed the Cannabis Regulatory Agency and take up the task of overseeing hemp processing, distribution and sales in addition to its current regulation of the marijuana industry. (Article originally appeared on Benzinga)

Governor Gretchen Whitmer said in a press statement that these administrative changes will help the state continue growing the hemp and marijuana economy, create jobs and invest in local communities. 

"Consolidating multiple government functions into the newly named Cannabis Regulatory Agency will help us continue growing our economy and creating jobs," Gov. Whitmer said. "And to be blunt-safe, legal cannabis entrepreneurship, farming, and consumption helps us put Michiganders first by directing the large windfall of tax revenue from this new industry to make bigger, bolder investments in local schools, roads, and first responders." 

The Marijuana Regulatory Agency was formed by executive order in spring of 2019 to oversee the regulation of medical and recreational marijuana following the legalization of adult-use cannabis via ballot initiative in 2018. 

Santa Barbara County Planning Commission approves permits for cannabis farms near Carpinteria High School.

One of the largest cannabis greenhouse projects in the Carpinteria Valley, a close neighbor of Carpinteria High School and a flashpoint in the local pot wars, had its permit unanimously approved by the Santa Barbara County Planning Commission this month, amid hopes that an emerging technology from the Netherlands will give residents some lasting relief from the “skunky” stench of pot.

The Feb. 2 vote in favor of zoning permits for Ever-Bloom, an 11-acre cannabis greenhouse operation owned by Ed Van Wingerden at 4701 Foothill Road, came on the heels of the commission’s unanimous approval on Jan. 12 of permits for Maximum Nursery, a 4-acre cannabis greenhouse at 4555 Foothill Road, owned by Ed’s brother, Winfred Van Wingerden.

Under the county’s permissive cannabis ordinance, both cultivation projects, like many others in the valley, have been allowed to operate without permits for more than four years.

Between mid-2018 and last week, records show, Carpinteria residents have submitted 188 complaints to the county about the pungent smell of pot near Ever-Bloom and the soapy “laundromat” smell of the misting system that is used to neutralize it. They said the odors were driving them indoors and, in a few cases, causing breathing problems, headaches and stinging eyes.

Now, the Van Wingerdens are heading up an effort to install the latest generation of air filters in valley greenhouses to get rid of the stink of cannabis in the small beachside community. The coalition’s lawsuit is on hold. Forty of the filters, called carbon “scrubbers,” are expected to arrive in May for Maximum, and more than 100 are under installation at Ever-Bloom, a $2 million investment.

GRAND RAPIDS — Terrapin Care Station and JARS Cannabis are partnering with Higher Learning Institutions to launch a year-long professional development program for minority entrepreneurs looking to get into the cannabis industry.

The Cannabis Community Social Equity Scholarship will be available to 20 people. Anyone can apply, but applicants will be prioritized if they are from a community that has been disproportionately affected by cannabis prohibition, they have marijuana-related convictions, or have been registered as a primary caregiver in Michigan.

“The war on drugs disproportionately affected many groups and communities in Michigan,” Terrapin CEO Chris Woods said in a statement. “We feel a responsibility to help right those wrongs, and create pathways into the legal cannabis industry for those who were targeted the most.”

Terrapin has been working with Pontiac-based Higher Learning Institutions by providing tours and learning opportunities for students at its Grand Rapids growing and processing facility. Higher Learning Institutions is a licensed vocational and technical school for cannabis and has graduated 100 students since it opened in February 2020.

The 20 recipients of the Cannabis Community Social Equity Scholarship will go through an accelerated program that includes education on cultivation, extraction, cannabis consultation and business affairs related to licensing. The program will include facility tours, guest lectures and one-on-one mentorship with industry professionals. 

In his SONA on Thursday, President Cyril Ramaphosa said that government would be looking to ease policies to help the hemp and cannabis sectors grow in South Africa.

"We will review the policy and regulatory framework for industrial hemp and cannabis to realise the huge potential for investment and job creation."

Ramaphosa claimed 130 000 jobs could be created if the industry were supported and regulatory processes streamlined.

Co-founder of Hemporium Tony Budden, says we should be focusing on developing the market that exists here in South Africa.

As the law stands in Denton now, you can still get cited for misdemeanor amounts of cannabis.

Cannabis reform has moved at a snail's pace in Texas. But activists are trying to speed things up by fighting for reform at the city and county levels. A group called Decriminalize Denton has twice tried to get an ordinance through City Council that would end citations and arrests for misdemeanor amounts of marijuana. Both times, the ordinance didn’t get the votes it needed from council members.

Now, Decriminalize Denton is trying to get the ordinance passed by a ballot initiative during the November 2022 city election. But first, they’ve got to get it on the ballot. To do that, they need at least 1,745 signatures. They’re aiming for 3,000.

They’ll start collecting those signatures during a kick-off event at noon on Feb. 19 outside the historic courthouse on Denton's downtown square.

“Help us give Denton voters a chance to decide our city's future on this key criminal justice issue that has plagued our community for far too long,” the group said in a post on Facebook.

The medical cannabis bill poised to pass the South Carolina Senate would prioritize existing hemp farmers in the state for certifications to grow marijuana.

Janel Ralph is the CEO of ReBotanicals, one of the first hemp farms in South Carolina. She got involved in the cannabis business because of her daughter, who has a rare, debilitating condition.

“Modern medicine had failed her,” Ralph said.

“There were no more pharmaceuticals we could give her. They ran out of options, so we did a Hail Mary.”

Judy Ghanem’s 16-year-old daughter Kira has autism and is non-verbal. 

Jim Buchanan is more than ready for change.

A second-generation Seattleite, cannabis retailer and entrepreneur, he is also president of the Washington State African American Cannabis Association and has spent months fighting for House Bill 2022, a bill that would make sweeping changes to Washington state’s cannabis industry.

The bill is the latest in a series of legislation intended to increase social equity and racial diversity in the cannabis trade.

In 2020, House Bill 2870 established the Marijuana Social Equity Program, an application-based process intended to provide people of color, harmed by the war on drugs, opportunities to become more involved in the burgeoning marijuana economy. The 2020 measure also created the Social Equity in Cannabis Task Force, comprising lawmakers, government representatives and industry experts charged with making recommendations about the issuance and reissuance of retail cannabis licenses in ways that would promote business ownership among people of color.

The bill currently before the Legislature incorporates many of the policies recommended by the task force, and would create 38 new retail and 25 new producer and processor licenses each year through 2029. The bill also stipulates that these and any other new cannabis licenses may only be awarded to so-called social equity applicants until 2030, after which 50% of licenses must be awarded to such applicants.

Detroit is proposing a new approach to handing out recreational marijuana business licenses. The city was in the midst of doing that when a federal court halted the process last year. It ruled that provisions in Detroit’s recreational marijuana ordinance gave longtime city residents, dubbed “Legacy Detroiters,” too much of an advantage to get those licenses.

Detroit City Council member James Tate now says that instead of fighting that ruling, he’s putting a new ordinance on the table. Instead of setting aside a certain number of licenses for city residents, it will reserve half of them for “social equity applicants.” The criteria for that designation is devised by the state, and includes factors such as living in a community highly-impacted by punitive drug policies, and having a drug-related conviction.

“We want to make sure that those individuals who’ve been from disproportionately impacted communities as it relates to cannabis arrests and convictions, [that] they have a true opportunity to compete for these licenses in the city of Detroit,” Tate said during a community meeting about the new ordinance Thursday.

Equity and non-equity applicants would be scored on separate tracks. Licenses would be handed out in three phases, with each phase needing City Council approval.

Tate thinks this ordinance will stand up to legal scrutiny, though he has no doubt there will still be legal challenges. “But more importantly, it provides an opportunity for Detroiters and equity applicants to have an opportunity to compete for these licenses in an industry that has shown no ceiling at this point,” he said.

Rarely are we able to combine the Grateful Dead and Mississippi in the same sentence, but the band once said, what a long strange trip it’s been. In November 2020, Mississippi voters overwhelmingly approved Initiative Measure No. 65, a citizen-driven ballot initiative. Initiative Measure No. 65 would have amended the Mississippi Constitution to create a state medical marijuana program. However, on May 14, 2021, the Mississippi Supreme Court overturned Initiative Measure No. 65, ruling that the state election law governing voter ballot initiatives was out-of-date and unworkable.

The Mississippi legislature thereafter began working to pass a medical marijuana bill. On January 26, 2022, the Mississippi legislature approved Senate Bill 2095, the “Mississippi Medical Cannabis Act.” Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves signed the bill into law on February 2, 2022. The act goes into effect immediately.

The act lists twenty medical conditions and categories of conditions for which an individual would be eligible for a medical marijuana card in Mississippi, including cancer, Crohn’s disease, post-traumatic stress disorder, any “chronic, terminal, or debilitating” condition producing chronic pain, and “any other condition” that may be added by the Mississippi Department of Health in the future. The act makes clear that it prohibits “smoking medical [marijuana] in a public place or in a motor vehicle.”

Importantly, unlike many other state medical marijuana legalization laws, the Mississippi act does not contain any express employment protections for medical marijuana cardholders. With respect to employment, the act specifically states that it does not:

Key Takeaways

The absence of express employment protection language in the act suggests that Mississippi employers could take adverse employment action against employees with medical marijuana cards with minimal risk of violating the act. However, Mississippi employers may want to remain mindful that even if taking action against employee-cardholders for their medical use of marijuana is lawful under the act, cardholders may pursue disability discrimination and accommodation claims related to their medical use of marijuana. Individuals must have a qualifying medical condition to receive a medical marijuana card, and any of the twenty medical conditions that would make an individual eligible for a card in Mississippi likely would be considered a disability under laws such as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Courts and administrative agencies around the country have regularly determined that medical marijuana cardholders may assert disability discrimination and accommodation claims under state law and, in some instances, the ADA. Therefore, Mississippi employers should closely monitor this issue going forward.

Public Health Minister Anutin Charnivakul said the move marked the beginning of “a new history for cannabis” in the country.

Two years after becoming the first nation to legalize the use of marijuana for medical purposes, Thailand has taken another step toward becoming the first Southeast Asian nation to decriminalize the drug. Yesterday, Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul signed a ministerial announcement officially removing cannabis and hemp from Category 5 of the country’s list of narcotics.

At a signing ceremony, Anutin, who has spearheaded Thailand’s push for decriminalization since his Bhumjaithai Party made legalization of cannabis a key campaign promise at the 2019 election, expressed hopes that the move marked the beginning of a “new history for cannabis” in Thailand. “Cannabis actually has plenty of medical benefits, not different from other herbs, and we are trying our best to make the Thai people enjoy both medical and economic benefits from it,” the minister said.

While Thailand legalized marijuana for medical purposes in 2020, the law only permitted the use of cannabis oil for treatments. But according to the Associated Press, yesterday’s delisting, which will enter into effect 120 days after its publication in the Royal Gazette, means that all parts of the marijuana plant, including its flowers and seeds, can legally be consumed in Thailand. However, the extracted content will remain illegal if it contains THC levels above 0.2 percent. THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, is the psychoactive ingredient of cannabis.

Of course, Anutin is no pro-legalization radical. His agenda is less to legalize recreational use of marijuana than to promote the plant’s medicinal use and to generate a commercial industry around serving this medical demand.

As a result, under the new rules, the production and sale of the herb will remain regulated and it will still be against the law to grow and consume marijuana. Anutin said that a bill on cannabis and hemp will be submitted to parliament in order to clarify the exact regulatory framework around its production and sale.

The Wyoming Highway Patrol announced Tuesday that troopers had seized 24.5 pounds of fentanyl, 7,200 pounds of marijuana, 207 pounds of methamphetamine, and 5 pounds of cocaine in 2021.

“Numerous states continue to deal with an increase in drug overdoses, while controlled substance problems continue to be a problem in Wyoming,” the WHP release said, adding that it was a “crucial issue and needs to be addressed head-on.”

The numbers come as part of the agency’s 2021 overall activity report.

Distracted, reckless, and/or impaired driving was another issue troopers were “diligent” in addressing, the release said, adding the agency had investigated 4,779 crashes throughout the year.

State senators are working their way closer to a vote on a bill that would legalize medical marijuana in the state.

Today’s debate was nearly eight hours, and lawmakers say they’re prepared for late nights ahead to try to get a vote on this bill by the end of the week.

Now on week three of debate on this bill to legalize medical marijuana in South Carolina, senators are starting to significantly work their way through and vote on amendments to the bill.

The day started with more than 40 amendments proposed, and the potential new legislation would not allow for smoking marijuana, but only for use in the form of oils, vapes, salves, and tinctures.

People would also only be eligible for a prescription if a doctor has diagnosed them in person with one of 13 medical conditions.

Two conservative groups have different perspective on this issue

A battle over whether to legalize marijuana is taking shape at the Ohio Statehouse. The lines are being drawn and groups that usually support each other on issues are finding they are at odds on this one.

Ohio lawmakers are now considering three proposals to legalize marijuana. Two are sponsored by lawmakers themselves - a Democratic bill and a Republican measure. The other is an initiated statute brought by an outside group. If lawmakers don’t pass it, that organization could gather signatures and take it to voters, perhaps this year.

The conservative Center for Christian Virtue says it is poised to fight efforts to legalize cannabis in Ohio. Its leader, Aaron Baer, says the group opposed the failed 2015 attempt to legalize pot and will fight again.

“The marijuana industry is not going to be able to fool another state, is not going to be able to fool Ohioans with their lies and their empty promises of what marijuana will do for our state. The tax revenue is not true. The harmless effect of it is not true. The reality – it brings devastation,” Baer says.

Debates over public safety

One key issue Baer and his group are hammering – public safety. Corrine Gasper of Delaware County lost her 22-year-old daughter in a car crash in 2012, when a driver high on pot blew through a stop sign, causing the fatal crash.

Consuming marijuana at work legally is something most people thought they would never live to see, but it may actually happen here in Colorado soon.

Newly proposed house bill 1152 filed in Colorado would prevent employers from "adverse action against an employee based on the employee's use of marijuana," according to the Colorado General Assembly.

Colorado Law on Cannabis Consumption

In 2012, Colorado made history with amendment 64 which legalized the recreational use of marijuana for adults over the age of 21.

Despite the fact that the consumption of cannabis is legal in Colorado, federally marijuana remains illegal.

How Is Cannabis Legal in Colorado But Illegal Federally?

The U.S. Department of Justice announced an update to its federal marijuana enforcement policy in 2013 stating:

House Bill 1152 would also require employers to let their employees consume medical marijuana while at work, though there are exceptions for people whose jobs are in dangerous fields.

olorado employers would be prohibited from denying employment to or firing workers because of their off-the-clock cannabis use – either medical or recreational – under a measure introduced last week at the statehouse.

House Bill 1152 would also require employers to let their workers consume medical marijuana while on the job. The legislation would include exceptions for workers whose jobs are in dangerous fields or require fine motor skills, such as positions involving the use of heavy machinery.

The bill seeks to answer a workplace question that has been swirling in Colorado since voters passed Amendment 64 in 2012, legalizing the sale and use of recreational cannabis. Most states that have legalized medicinal and recreational pot leave the question over how to handle employees’ marijuana use up to employers, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. 

Nevada and New Jersey are two exceptions. In New Jersey, employers can prohibit employees from using cannabis while on the job or showing up to work impaired. But they are not allowed to penalize an employee solely because of their off-the-clock recreational cannabis use.

Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul signed an announcement to remove cannabis and hemp from its drugs list on Tuesday and the change will take effect 120 days after being published in the Royal Gazette.

Mr Anutin said the Narcotics Control Board endorsed the Public Health Ministry’s draft announcement on the list of Category 5 narcotics and the Food and Drug Administration received an approval letter from the Justice Ministry for it to finalize the announcement.

He said the announcement will then be published in the Royal Gazette and will take effect 120 days afterwards.

The move paves the way for households to grow the plant, which will be allowed after they notify the authority.