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Cities and towns across New York are considering whether to allow retail cannabis dispensaries and consumption lounges legalized under state law to operate within their jurisdictions, with some officials urging them to act as a deadline approaches.

In March, the New York state legislature and Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo approved legislation to legalize marijuana for adults and establish a regulated and taxed economy for the commercial production and sale of cannabis. Under that legislation, municipal governments have the right to opt out of the establishment of licensed cannabis dispensaries and consumption lounges within their borders. Towns and cities that decide not to allow such businesses must hold a referendum on the ban if at least 20 percent of registered voters sign petitions calling for such a vote.

During a recent webinar, Sarah Brancatell, the legislative director for the New York State Association of Towns, warned municipal leaders that do not want cannabis lounges and retailers in their communities that they have only until the end of the year to approve a local ordinance. Cities and towns that do not opt out before that time will not be able to in the future.

“The local law has to be adopted on or before Dec. 31, 2021. That’s coming up really quickly,” said Brancarella. “It’s like a one or done shot. If you adopt it on Jan. 1, it has no effect.”

New York Local Officials Taking Action

Municipal leaders across the state have begun to take notice, and movements to enact bans on cannabis businesses are already underway. In North Salem, a suburb of New York City in Westchester County, the Town Board has set a hearing to be held June 22 via Zoom on a proposed opt-out ordinance. At a meeting of the board on May 25, Supervisor Warren Lucas said that if the town opts out of the businesses, the decision can be reversed at a later date.

The state House on Monday approved a set of revisions to Pennsylvania’s medical marijuana law, seeking to make permanent some of the changes put in place temporarily because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Representatives voted 164 to 38 for the bill, which would permit dispensing a three-month supply at a time, up from one month’s supply. Patients will be able to continue to pick up their medicine outside a dispensary, rather than coming inside the building.

State Health Department communications director Barry Ciccocioppo said the agency was concerned about provisions of the bill he said threaten product quality and patient safety.

” We look forward to working with the legislature to resolve these concerns for the best interest of Pennsylvanians,” Ciccocioppo said.

The legislation would also let caregivers provide help to more than five patients at once and would ease the process by which contaminants must be removed before the final testing. Grower-processors would be permitted to use pesticides under standards the Agriculture Department would develop.

Marijuana Advocacy groups Are Pushing Congress To Pass A Federal Cannabis Bill This Month

A collection of influential advocacy groups are pushing for federal cannabis reform. Both the ACLU and NAACP are pressing the heads of a congress to conduct a vote. This vote would be in regards to a House bill to legalize cannabis on a federal level. The vote and potential passing of the bill are trying to be accomplished by the end of the month.

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights (LCCHR) shared their thoughts on cannabis reform. This was done in a letter that was sent just last week, to the House leadership. The group stated that it’s important to pass the Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment, and Expungement Act. Back in 2020 the MORE Act passed the House and is now being reintroduced.

Ever since last year when the House approved the MORE Act. “the circumstances of this past year have made the War on Drugs even more untenable and amplified the voices of those demanding transformation in our criminal-legal system,” the groups wrote.

“In the face of a growing national dialogue on discriminatory law enforcement practices, including the disproportionate policing of drug use in communities of color, transforming our criminal-legal system and redressing its harms is more relevant and more pressing than ever before,” the letter states. “Marijuana reform represents a modest but necessary first step toward that transformation and toward repairing the harm wrought by the War on Drugs. The MORE Act remains the most effective and equitable way forward.”

Federal Cannabis Reform A Step In The Right Direction

Jerrold Nadler who is the Judiciary Committee Chairman has stepped up as the sponsor of the bill. This bill would remove marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act. As well as erasing the past cannabis crimes for people who have been in trouble with those issues. Next, this bill would also impose a federal tax on cannabis. The tax money that is made from legal cannabis would be used to rebuild communities and fund other programs. 

Police in Great Britain reportedly discovered that a 17th century castle had been used as a massive cannabis growing operation.

Colorado has submitted a revised Hemp Management Plan to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) that it says aligns with the Department’s Final Rule.

The USDA’s interim final rule on hemp was published back in late October 2019, followed by a consultation process Colorado participated in. Colorado decided not to submit a revised plan to the USDA until after the release of the Final Rule, which occurred in mid-January. In the state’s opinion, the resulting Final Rule was “vastly improved”, but the Colorado Department of Agriculture will continue to advocate for additional rule revisions with view to creating even more flexibility for producers.

Currently, the state’s hemp program is still operating under provisions in the 2014 Farm Bill, but it can only continue to do so until September this year – so this Plan is a very important document.

“I’m proud Colorado is home to a strong hemp industry and that our state is the leader in the development of industrial hemp,” said Governor Jared Polis. “The revised Hemp Management Plan gives Colorado’s hemp producers a realistic way to expand operations while also ensuring that testing is in place.”

It was back in 2012 when Colorado’s citizens voted to pass Amendment 64 to the Colorado Constitution, which contained a directive to enact legislation governing the cultivation, processing and sale of industrial hemp. Legislation adopted the following year delegated the responsibility for establishing registration and inspection regulations for hemp cultivation to the CDA.

Can you imagine a place where over 300,000 voters overwhelmingly pass a law only to have 7 governing elites overturn it with a bogus lawsuit? 

Welcome to Mississippi. 

In a stunning turn of political events, the Supreme Court of Mississippi has overturned the will of the voters and thrown out medical cannabis legalization in a state known for its hospitality. I guess that only applies to non-cannabis patients in Mississippi. People with terminal cancer, kids with severe epilepsy, adults with MS, and countless others suffering from addiction to chronic pain will be left behind and forgotten once again. The legislature must act as a check and balance on an extremist court, and restore the will of the voters once and for all. They must exercise their constitutional authority and moral duty by acting now. 

It’s a well-known medical fact that cannabis helps extend life for children with severe epilepsy. These kids and their families deal with daily life that no one can imagine as hundreds of seizures inflict untold suffering on these children. Many die young as the toll of the disease wears their poor bodies down. Access to affordable medical cannabis is often the only hope for these families; many have migrated to states like Colorado and California to gain access and help their kids. They deserve better from their leaders in Mississippi.

Senate Democrats just don’t have enough of a majority to use the budget reconciliation process to their full advantage this year.

There has been some discussion over the past couple of months that Senate Majority Chuck Schumer might employ some clever finagling to bypass the 60-vote supermajority requirement to push through a comprehensive marijuana reform bill. As it stands, an old rule known as the filibuster is in the way of Schumer securing the votes necessary to make legal weed a reality. But if he could wrap it up in a budget reconciliation proposal, there’s a chance it would pass with a simple majority.

If the term budget reconciliation sounds familiar, that’s because it’s the only way Democrats have been able to get anything accomplished in the past few months. The budget reconciliation process allows the Senate to pass bills with a simple majority (51 votes), basically moving a bill through the upper chamber without Republican support. This is how they passed President Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-relief bill, despite Republicans throwing a fit about how it would cripple America.

Photo by Harold Mendoza via Unsplash

The problem with this tactic, however, is the controlling party can typically only use it once per fiscal year.

While California led the charge to legalize marijuana, more precisely defined as “cannabis” under state law — I know, it’s confusing — the state has also repeatedly failed to forge a legal path for hemp-derived products, including cannabidiol (CBD).

Following the passage of the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 (the 2018 Farm Bill), the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) released an FAQ entitled, “FAQ – Industrial Hemp and Cannabidiol (CBD) in Food Products” (emphasis added by the CDPH), which provided that hemp, including CBD, could not be added to any kind of ingestible product like foods, beverages, dietary supplements, or animal products. Interestingly enough, there wasn’t, and still isn’t, any state law that actually prohibits adding hemp or CBD to finished products intended for human consumption. Instead, the CDPH adopted the federal FDA position.

Although the FAQ did not expressly say so, it was clear from its reading that the CDPH treated hemp-derived ingestible products adulterated under the state’s Sherman Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Law (the Sherman Law), the state equivalent of the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act  (FDCA). In fact, local agencies, like the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, later issued their own statements, which expressly categorized these products as adulterated, ostensibly confirming the CDPH’s unexpressed position.

Therefore, without going through the proper rule-making process, the CDPH effectively banned hemp-derived consumables, a policy that local agencies proceeded to enforce.

Could California be on the brink of decriminalizing psychedelics? A proposal aiming to do just that passed a major legislative hurdle on Monday, as it was approved by the state Senate.

The legislation now moves to the California General Assembly. Senate Bill 519 “would make lawful the possession for personal use, as described, and the social sharing, as defined, of psilocybin, psilocyn, dimethyltryptamine (DMT), ibogaine, mescaline, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), ketamine, and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), by and with persons 21 years of age or older,” according to the text of the bill, which was authored by state Sen. Scott Wiener.

In a message posted to Twitter on Monday, Wiener trumpeted the bill’s passage in the state Senate as a “big step for this legislation and the movement,” as well as a step toward “a more health and science-based approach and to move away from criminalization of drugs.”

He also thanked supporters for helping promote the legislation.

In an interview with local television station FOX40 last month, Wiener said that, regardless of what one thinks about drugs, “the question is ‘Should we be arresting and jailing people for possessing and using drugs?’ And I think the answer is absolutely no.”

Kentucky-based hemp company GenCanna has filed a lawsuit again hemp processor Vertical Wellness, alleging that the company reneged on a contract to dry up to 12 million pounds of hemp, reports Law360.

GenCanna allegedly asked Vertical Wellness to pause the drying operations in November, as the company had filed bankruptcy and was in the process of selling its assets to MGG Investment Group.

GenCanna alleges that Vertical Wellness initially complied but then resumed drying operations at its Cadiz, KY facility in December without the company’s permission.

GenCanna maintains that the contract gave them an option to halt processing, while Vertical Wellness says the agreement was based on GenCanna’s desire to have the hemp processed by the end of 2020.

In a statement to Law360, J. Smoke Wallin, CEO of Vertical Wellness, said GenCanna and MGG breached the contract and called the lawsuit “completely frivolous.”

If nine out of ten Americans believe that marijuana should be legal for adults—and according to a Pew Research poll conducted in April, they do—this begs an obvious question: Why hasn’t Congress passed federal marijuana legalization?

UNITED STATES - APRIL 28: Members of the DC Marijuana Justice community hold a 51 blow-up joint on ... [+]

 CQ-ROLL CALL, INC VIA GETTY IMAGES

The country’s closest brush with national cannabis reform was last December, when the House of Representatives for the first time approved a legalization bill with a floor vote. As expected, the milestone was symbolic: The Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment, and Expungement Act (or MORE Act) did not receive a hearing in then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s Senate. (The fact that its sponsor was then-Senator Kamala Harris (D-California), the vice-president elect, probably didn’t help.)

With Democrats in charge of both houses of Congress and the White House—and with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer an avowed legalization supporter, will things be any different, or better? On Friday, House Democrats on Friday reintroduced the MORE Act, which would remove cannabis from the federal Controlled Substances Act, wipe certain marijuana-related offenses from individuals’ criminal records, and steer money towards individuals and communities hurt by the War on Drugs.

Fiji’s capital Suva has been in and out of Covid lockdowns over recent weeks, and my Netflix got a workout. I watched a TV show called “Cooked with Cannabis”. Admittedly there were a few baked hippies, but the cooking was good. Jokes aside, the show revealed the sophisticated and lucrative global cannabis industry, projected to grow to an extraordinary US$90.4 billion internationally by 2026.

Watching the show also got me thinking about Fiji’s economy as the country fights through a second wave of the pandemic via containment measures and a vaccination drive. Fiji has taken an almighty hit. GDP was slashed to approximately $4.3 billion in 2020, with growth falling by 19%, according to the International Monetary Fund. Foreign tourists have vanished, all non-essential businesses have been forced to close, and the much mooted Pacific travel bubble is likely to be off the cards for the immediate future. With national debt levels soaring, a nasty storm is brewing.

Fiji needs to diversify its economy away from a reliance on tourism. Despite the government’s best efforts to provide relief through food ration deliveries and a $90 emergency payment to families affected by Covid, these well-intentioned initiatives have arguably fallen short. Many people complained that calls to the food-ration hotline went unanswered, or the deliveries never arrived, while the need for Fijians to provide tax details in order to claim the relief payments meant those in the informal sector were all but left behind.

That’s where cannabis presents an opportunity.

Sources have confirmed that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is committed to trying to push through a more global legalization bill before pivoting to a smaller bill like the SAFE Banking Act.

The saga of cannabis legalization at the federal level is ongoing, as the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives continues to pass sweeping legalization bills that (to date) have gotten little traction in the divided U.S. Senate. (Link). The result has heightened speculation throughout the cannabis community, as activists, entrepreneurs and those with cannabis convictions wait for the federal government to act.

And while it’s impossible to say precisely what a final cannabis-reform bill will look like, those in the know (like the publishers of an unidentified cannabis-newsletter, for example) have gleaned some interesting things from the smoke signals coming from Capitol Hill.

Photo by Jonathan Ernst/Pool/Getty Images

Chuck Will Have a Lot to Say

As Politico recently wrote, “Chuck Schumer really likes to talk about weed.” (Link). Indeed, cannabis reform has become the cause celebre of the senior Senator from New York, as he continues to advocate for a sweeping legalization bill that could include everything from criminal justice reforms to provisions allowing plant-touching companies to access the U.S. capital markets.

When states first began to “experiment” with the legalization of marijuana, lawmakers, state officials, and everyone else, for that matter, were eager to see how selling legal weed would pan out.

On the one hand, naysayers wanted to judge whether the socioeconomic cost of legalization was worth the tax dollars the market would surely drive into state and local coffers. At the same time, advocates stood waiting for a “told ya so” moment, when they could show the nation that a legitimate pot market would not lead to a drug-addled society. Years later, the results have been mixed.

However, a new study in the journal Addiction attempts to shine some light on the legalization of recreational marijuana. More specifically, it shows what can be expected to happen with illicit drug markets in states that pass recreational marijuana laws, and it is interesting, to say the least.

For starters, fully legal marijuana, subject to state regulations and taxes, appears to make black market pot products more affordable. Researchers found a 9.2% drop in the price of street weed in places with recreational marijuana laws on the books. In some cases, lower quality bud experienced a price decrease of 19.5%. The “prediction,” as the study calls it, is that marijuana legalization is creating less demand for black market weed and therefore driving down the prices.

Still, real life tells us that legalization is fueling the black market in a lot of ways. This is especially true in states like California, where illicit pot operations still outnumber the legal ones. The legitimate market has also increased black market dealings across state lines. Law enforcement in prohibition states continue to report more increases in marijuana seizures all the time.

Studies that show no links between legal cannabis programs and marijuana use by young people should be encouraging news for advocates and those who are wary of cannabis.

A new batch of data shows that despite marijuana earning its legal status in several U.S. states, young people aren’t exactly getting their hands on the stuff any easier. This data adds to a growing body of evidence that indicates that legal marijuana doesn’t make it more likely for teens to consume it.

Marijuana use in teens and young adults is a serious concern, one that has been correlated with higher odds of developing a dependency on the drug and of developing mental health conditions like depression, anxiety, and psychosis.

Photo by Eliott Reyna via Unsplash

The data came from the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) and was submitted by high schoolers between the years 2009 and 2019. The analysis demonstrated that there was not a significant change or increase in the percentage of students who consumed cannabis within the past 30 days.

Is marijuana legalization about to go federal? Congressional leaders took the massive and potentially historic first step on Friday, when they introduced the Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment, and Expungement Act of 2021, or “The MORE Act of 2021”.

The stated purpose of the MORE Act of 2021: “To decriminalize and deschedule cannabis, to provide for reinvestment in certain persons adversely impacted by the War on Drugs, to provide for expungement of certain cannabis offenses, and for other purposes.” 

The legislation was brought by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, the longtime Democrat from New York, along with members of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus.

The significance of the proposal can’t be overstated. If it passed, it would end the federal prohibition on marijuana—something a growing number of cities and states across the country have already done. 

“Since I introduced the MORE Act last Congress, numerous states across the nation, including my home state of New York, have moved to legalize marijuana. Our federal laws must keep up with this pace,” Nadler said in a statement. “I’m proud to reintroduce the MORE Act to decriminalize marijuana at the federal level, remove the needless burden of marijuana convictions on so many Americans, and invest in communities that have been disproportionately harmed by the War on Drugs.”

Delta-8 THC had a good run. People made money, customers were happy, and it all seemed legal to boot. Like all good things in life, states and the DEA are doing everything in their power to ensure that delta-8’s run comes to an end. Let’s talk about why.

For those of you who may not have been paying attention, delta-8 is one of many, many cannabinoids in cannabis (marijuana and hemp) plants. Unlike CBD, it gets you high. It’s not usually present in high volume in cannabis, so it’s usually derived by converting hemp CBD through chemical processes, and can’t be legally derived from marijuana under federal law.

In theory (or, more accurately, according to the literal text of the federal 2018 Farm Bill, if you care about little details like “what the actual law is”) hemp-derived delta-8 THC should be considered legal under present federal law. But the DEA apparently didn’t get that memo.

Late last year, the DEA issued an interim final rule (IFR) that says that all synthetic cannabinoids are Schedule I narcotics and illegal. Never mind that delta-8 is most commonly derived from a hemp plant and that the 2018 Farm Bill legalized hemp and its derivatives because, well, the DEA apparently thinks it’s as dangerous as heroin. We wrote quite a bit on why the DEA was just wrong around the time the IFR was published, and generally stand by that opinion.

Surprisingly, the DEA didn’t see eye to eye with the entire industry. It even put delta-8 on its “Orange Book” of controlled substances. I won’t get into too much more detail on the status of federal delta-8 law, as my colleague Nathalie Bougenies recently did just that a few months back.

The fate of legalization will largely hinge on the ruling Socialists. The government, led by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, has demonstrated a lack of enthusiasm for even medical cannabis legalization.

On May 13, the health committee of Spain’s Congress of Deputies approved a proposal to create a subcommittee that will consider other countries’ experiences with medical cannabis. The subcommittee’s findings could pave the way for medical cannabis legalization in Spain. According to a recent poll, approximately 90% of Spaniards would favor such a move.

Spain currently lacks a medical cannabis program at the national level. Two cannabis medications, Sativex and Epidiolex, have been approved by the regulator, but only for specified ailments; use to treat other conditions must be approved by a medical tribunal, subject to variations among localities. Moreover, costs can be prohibitive.

Photo by Henrique Ferreira via Unsplash

From jobs to tax revenue to commercial real estate, the marijuana industry has a large – and growing – impact on the broader economy in the United States. The total U.S. economic impact from marijuana sales in 2021 is expected to reach $92 billion – up more than 30 percent from last year – and upwards of $160 billion in 2025, according to analysis from the newly published MJBizFactbook.

To measure the industry’s economic impact, MJBizDaily analyzed similar industries and applied a standard multiplier of 3.5 on projected recreational and medical marijuana retail sales. The numbers are a best guess because the marijuana industry’s structure is somewhat unique because it encompasses agricultural, manufacturing and retail activity.

The economic impact of the marijuana industry is not the same as supply-chain revenues that are often used to estimate the “total size” of an industry. Rather, the economic multiplier paints a picture of the impact the industry has on the broader economy. In this case, for every $1 consumers and patients spend at retail locations, an additional $2.50 will be injected into the economy, much of it at the local level.

That impact comes directly from the day-to-day needs of workers in the cannabis industry, including spending on life’s necessities such as housing, transportation, entertainment and more. Marijuana businesses, consumers and patients also pay hundreds of millions of dollars in state and local taxes that are used to fund state and local government activities, including schools and roads.

In addition, real estate receives a boost from new retail, manufacturing and agricultural businesses moving into an area or established companies expanding, increasing broader demand for commercial properties. Cultivating and manufacturing marijuana can require large investments in equipment and technology that boost not only the local economy but also areas throughout the U.S.

Currently, there are no fully legal adult-use cannabis countries in Europe, but Luxembourg is moving forward. The only two countries that have legalized cannabis for adult use are Uruguay and Canada.

With that being said, there are already countries in Europe that are quasi-legal, such as in Switzerland where low-THC cannabis is bought and sold legally.

In Italy, the Supreme Court ruled previously that home cultivation is legal, and while lawmakers are still trying to sort things out, there are now some legal protections in place for consumers.

Several countries are exploring legalization, and in some cases even launching limited pilot programs such as in the Netherlands, however, one country may be on the fastest path to full legalization in Europe.

Luxembourg Takes Another Step Forward

Luxembourg may not be the first country that people think of when it comes to the debate of which country will be the first to fully legalize in Europe.