WeedLife News Network

State marijuana regulators are reconsidering how they will now run a lottery to decide who wins licenses to operate six additional medical marijuana dispensaries after no business answered a bid solicitation to develop the process. 

"Unfortunately, the state did not receive any responses," Brian Hodge, a spokesman for the Department of Business Regulation, said Wednesday. "We are currently exploring alternative options and still expect to conduct the lottery by later this spring." 

In February the state sought a company to “design and develop the methodology for the random selection process,” that would be held, in public, around May 14. 

The bid proposal said the company would be "primarily responsible for securing all equipment, technology, or other necessary mediums to run the process.” 

It wasn’t immediately clear what alternative options regulators were now discussing. 

The Ohio Department of Agriculture (ODA) has extended the licensure deadline for hemp farms from April 9 to May 28.

The department received multiple requests from hemp farmers over the last few weeks to extend the deadline. Many existing and prospective hemp farmers expressed that they are still experiencing delays in obtaining the necessary land and seeds to plant this spring, ODA told Hemp Grower in an email.

After considering farmers' concerns, the ODA decided to extend the deadline.

Any prospective licensee can download a guide to submit a new application here.

The change in the presidential administration has focused cannabis businesses on the potential for legalization nationwide.

Running parallel to full federal legalization will be a corresponding regulatory and taxation scheme replacing the current regime of IRC §280E which prohibits anything but the cost of goods sold being deducted from a state licensed cannabis operation’s income statement. 

The evolution of the federal taxation of cannabis started with the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, which applied tax to marijuana used for medicine.

Historians and critics alike maligned this legislation as an attempt to stop the use of cannabis rather than tax it.

The fines were greatly out of line with any failure in tax compliance — violators were fined up to $2,000 and a potential prison sentence of up to five years, while the actual tax was merely $1 per ounce or $24 per year. 

Despite all of the resistance, the fact is that cannabis legalization is happening right now. State by state, country by country, it’s going global.

When the Biden Administration took the White House, the headlines all clamored that it will be a “good time for cannabis”.

Stocks seemed to echo the sentiment.

Yet, since the administration took office, they fired staffers for admitting they smoked weed in the past, Kamala Harris rolled back her “pro pot stance” to align with the President’s, and now the entire “weed thing” has been put on the back burner.

Photo by Win McNamee/Staff/Getty Images

More than two years after Michigan voters approved marijuana for adult use, residents convicted of many pot-related crimes that have now been legalized have an opportunity to expunge them from their records.

Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed a sweeping "clean slate" package of bills in October that will automatically expunge some criminal records in 2023, while others have to be applied for. On Monday, Attorney General Dana Nessel announced a new website where Michigan residents can learn about how to begin the process expunge the marijuana-related criminal records that require an application.

"Michiganders voted to legalize recreational marijuana use years ago," Nessel said in a statement. "Residents should rightfully be able to eliminate convictions for actions that are no longer considered a crime in our state."

According to the new website, "a person convicted of 1 or more misdemeanor or local ordinance marijuana crimes may petition the convicting court to set aside the convictions if they were based on activity that would not have been a crime after December 6, 2018, when a 2018 voter-passed initiative to legalize recreational use of marijuana in Michigan went into effect."

The website explains the requirements, including a checklist of eligible misdemeanor marijuana offenses. Additionally, a person convicted of one or more criminal offenses including felonies (but not more than a total of three felonies) may petition to expunge the convictions.

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed legislation Monday legalizing recreational marijuana use within months and kicking off sales next year, making it the seventh state since November to put an end to pot prohibition.

The governor, a Democrat, has supported marijuana reform as a way to create jobs and shore up state revenue.

On Monday, she also touched on concerns about the harm inflicted on racial and ethnic minorities by drug criminalization and tough policing, noting that the new law could free about 100 from prison and expunge criminal records for thousands of residents.

“It is good for workers. It is good for entrepreneurs. It is good for consumers," she said of legalization. “And it brings about social justice in ways in which we have been talking about and advocating for, for decades.”

The signed bill gives the governor a strong hand in oversight of recreational marijuana through her appointed superintendent of the Regulation and Licensing Department.

Prohibiting marijuana hurts the legitimacy and credibility of the criminal justice system. Such prohibitions are undemocratic, racially discriminative, costly, ineffective and a blatant waste of resources.

Cannabis users and enthusiasts always want to focus solely on the medicinal and recreational benefits of the plant, which is excellent, but there is more to understand about marijuana.

For example, you cannot separate marijuana usage from the policy-making process, including legalization and the criminal justice system. These governmental aspects are fundamental because they affect how we all use cannabis.

Photo by Esther Kelleter/Getty Images

If the government in your state is hostile towards cannabis use by setting up policies limiting your access to this super plant, you will feel frustrated. So always pay close attention to what goes on in the legislative and governmental sectors regarding cannabis.

Three bills revising marijuana laws passed their final reading in the Montana House Thursday afternoon.

House Bills 701, 707 and 670 are all measures generally revising laws relating to the taxation and regulation of recreational and medical marijuana.

HB 701 would give licensing, cultivation and sales authority of medical marijuana to the Department of Revenue, as well as create separate license categories for cultivation, manufacturing, dispensing and transporting marijuana.

HB 707 would provide taxation for marijuana at the wholesale level and create wholesale licenses.

HB 670 would create a marijuana revenue trust fund, increase the medical marijuana tax rate to 5% and decrease the adult-use marijuana tax rate to 15%, among other things.

As many states are doing, New York fully embraced the concept of social and economic equity by setting a target goal of 50% of licenses issued to social and economic equity applicants.

After years of fits and starts, New York finally legalized adult-use cannabis and expanded its previously restrictive medical cannabis program. As the nation’s third largest economy and fourth most populous state, New York has the opportunity to set the gold standard for state cannabis industries.

New York’s Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act (“MRTA”) establishes industry governing bodies — the Cannabis Control Board (“CCB”) and the Office of Cannabis Management (“OCM”), creates license types across the commercial cannabis activity spectrum, sets up a social and economic equity plan, and allocates a significant portion of tax revenue from cannabis sales to social and economic equity programs.

An important political catalyst for the New York legislature’s passage of the MRTA was the expectation that tax revenue generated from cannabis sales will reduce the state’s significant budget deficit and repair of some of the economic damage caused by COVID. Another political objective was correcting social and economic injustices caused by decades of inequitable enforcement of marijuana laws.

Commercially, the MRTA aims to prevent anti-competitive behavior among licensees, creating adult-use licenses for cultivators, processors, cooperatives, distributors, retail dispensaries, microbusinesses, deliveries, cultivation nurseries, and on-site consumption. Industry rules and regulations will be created and implemented by the CCB and OCM, including those related to the number of licenses issued per license type and by geographic area.

If Washington wants to be as competitive as possible, it has to drop the cottage cloak around ownership at some point — and eliminating it for financiers just isn’t enough.

I absolutely loved Washington State when I lived there. I lived in Seattle for seven years and was one of the first attorneys in the state to take on medical cannabis business clients in 2010 and then again with adult use clients in 2012 when I-502 passed. Our law firm is a pioneer in the cannabis space, but particularly in Washington State where our cannabis practice first began many years ago.

I also think Washington has a top notch cannabis program when it comes to its regulations. They are clear and comprehensive, setting up licensees for success as industry understands what it is getting most of the time from the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board (“LCB“). Of course, there are ambiguities with Washington’s administrative code and cannabis (like with all states), and there always will be because different licensing analysts will give competing interpretations of the law and rules on everything from label review submissions to analyses of true parties of interest. I certainly don’t agree with every LCB rule on the books, but I respect the heck out of Washington for the cannabis program it created and has maintained over the years.

Photo by Flickr user Tanya

All of the foregoing is why I was incredibly excited and honored to testify at a Washington State House Commerce and Gaming Committee Legislative Work Session on March 26. You can watch the entire hearing here. I moved to Los Angeles in 2017 and have really focused on California’s cannabis scene for a while now, but I keep up with Washington’s cannabis marketplace and our firm continues to maintain its cannabis practice out of Seattle.

With Montana set to become the next state to legalize marijuana, lawmakers in Big Sky Country will have some options on how to go about implementing the policy.

Local TV outlet KPAX reported this week that legislators there in the state House have “advanced three bills that provide different visions for how to implement recreational marijuana in the state, after legislative leadership asked them to keep all three alive.”

According to KPAX, House Bills 701, 670 and 707 have all passed in “preliminary votes” after floor debates, giving hope to sponsors of each piece of legislation that theirs may still gain ultimate passage. All three bills have been brought up by Republican members of the House, with each offering a distinct vision on how to bring legalization to Montana.

HB 701 “would set up separate licenses for medical and recreational dispensaries, limit licenses to existing marijuana providers for 18 months, require counties to ‘opt-in’ to allowing marijuana businesses and send some of the tax revenue to Gov. Greg Gianforte’s ‘HEART Fund’ account for mental health and substance abuse treatment,” according to KPAX.

HB 670, meanwhile, would “create a single license for medical and recreational marijuana sales, lower the tax on recreational sales to 15% and raise the medical marijuana tax to 5%,” KPAX said, while also earmarking a third of the revenue from recreational pot toward “a trust fund to address negative impacts of marijuana use, with the rest going toward the state’s public employee pension liability.”

New York recently became the 15th U.S. state to legalize cannabis for recreational use.

While 67% of U.S. adults support marijuana legalization, public knowledge about cannabis is low. A third of Americans think hemp and marijuana are the same thing, according to the National Institutes of Health, and many people still search Google to find out whether cannabidiol – a cannabis derivative known as CBD – will get them high, as marijuana does.

Hemp, marijuana and CBD are all related, but they differ in significant ways. Here’s what you need to know about their legality, effects and potential health benefits.

Hemp, marijuana and cannabanoidals

Both hemp and marijuana belong to the same species, Cannabis sativa, and the two plants look somewhat similar. However, substantial variation can exist within a species. After all, great Danes and chihuahuas are both dogs, but they have obvious differences.

The defining difference between hemp and marijuana is their psychoactive component: tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC. Hemp has 0.3% or less THC, meaning hemp-derived products don’t contain enough THC to create the “high” traditionally associated with marijuana.

South Carolina's medical marijuana legalization bill is heading to likely defeat without getting a debate in the state Senate.

Despite the discussion being scheduled for Tuesday, opposition to the proposal among lawmakers is becoming increasingly clear, with Sen. Greg Hembree (R-Myrtle Beach) announcing he intends to block the debate from even starting.

Under Senate rules, one senator has the power to hold up discussions. It would require three-fifths of senators to vote to override the move. It's unclear if enough senators support the divisive bill, but even its supporters contend that it isn't likely.

Hembree said he was concerned that medical marijuana had not been approved by the FDA and thought this bill was a gateway effort to legalizing recreational marijuana.

"Do we want to be a state that approves the safe recreational use of marijuana? I'm okay to have that debate," he said. "That, to me, is an honest debate."

London Mayor Sadiq Khan will form a commission to study the potential of decriminalization of cannabis if he is re-elected next month, according to media reports from the United Kingdom. Khan was expected to unveil the proposal to study the health, economic, and criminal justice benefits of cannabis decriminalization on Tuesday as part of his platform for re-election.

“It’s time for fresh ideas about how to reduce the harms drugs and drug-related crimes cause to individuals, families, and communities,” Khan will say, according to a report from The Guardian. “The commission will make recommendations focusing on the most effective laws to tackle crime, protect Londoners’ health, and reduce the huge damage that illegal drugs, including cannabis, cause to our communities and society.”

“That’s why, if I’m re-elected, I will establish a new London Drugs Commission comprised of independent experts to examine the latest evidence from around the world,” Khan said.

“The commission will make recommendations focusing on the most effective laws to tackle crime, protect Londoners’ health and reduce the huge damage that illegal drugs, including cannabis, cause to our communities and society.”

The mayor’s office noted that the illicit drug trade costs U.K. society £19 billion per year, and nearly 42,000 people in England and Wales were charged with a drug-related offense last year. Although Khan has said he is against decriminalizing class-A drugs such as cannabis and heroin, he would support cannabis reform if the commission concludes the move would be beneficial.

Legislation reintroduced to the U.S. Senate this week seeks to increase the maximum allowable level of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in hemp.

While the 2018 Farm Bill legalised hemp in the USA at a federal level, it imposed a maximum level of 0.3% THC. In addition to greatly increasing the risk of crops being considered “hot”, resulting their destruction and farmers potentially facing criminal proceedings, it also put the industry behind jurisdictions in some other countries where the maximum level is 1%; for example in Western Australia.

Additionally, while the USDA’s final rule for hemp production released in January took into consideration some comments submitted regarding the interim final rule, several other particularly thorny issues remain.

This week, U.S. Senator Rand Paul reintroduced the Hemp Economic Mobilization Plan (HEMP) Act of 2021 that would tackle these issues.

“My legislation will help this growing industry reach its full economic potential, and I am proud the bill has strong support all the way from local Kentucky farmers and activists to national groups,” said the Senator.

Ryan Hale is the chief sales officer for cannabis security firm Operational Security Solutions (OSS). What that means is that Hale works with a host of big, burly ex-police/ex-military guys you wouldn’t want to meet alone in a dark alley.

Those men guard, and deposit to financial institutions, the hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash proceeds that cannabis companies daily generate but can’t process the way mainstream companies do. This problem, of course, stems from institutional nervousness over marijuana’s federally illegal status.

Enter the SAFE Banking Act (the Secure and Fair Enforcement Banking Act), which was just reintroduced in late March to the U..S. House and Senate, having previously passed the House on September 25. At this point, the legislation has bipartisan support and is widely expected to pass.

The SAFE Act would create a “safe harbor” to protect federal depository institutions and credit unions from federal prosecution if they work with marijuana-related businesses (MRBs) and ancillary companies in legal states. Loan activity could proceed. Minority cannabis operations –dependent on small business loans due to having less wealth than white businesses – could more easily borrow funds and progress toward the equity the industry seeks.

In short, the pressure on MRBs to go “cash only” could cease, reducing those businesses’ risks and making their employees a whole lot safer.

The race is on!

Just over a month after New Jersey became the 13th state to legalize marijuana for recreational purposes, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a marijuana legalization bill into law Wednesday, crowding the legal weed market in the Mid-Atlantic before it even gets off the ground. 

Both states are in line to reap hundreds of millions in tax revenue, but awaiting the “winner” of the legal weed race could be a lucrative period of exclusivity, where not just state residents but millions of visitors from across the Mid-Atlantic could conceivably be within a few hours of legal — and taxed — marijuana.

"I think the rivalry will begin again," said Jeff Smith, an analyst and journalist with Marijuana Business Daily, a trade publication covering the cannabis industry. "We heard a few years ago how New Jersey and New York were racing to be the first to legalize adult use (marijuana).

"It's a monster market, and I think the race is on again."