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According to a news report from the Associated Press, Nebraska voters will likely get to vote this November on initiatives to legalize medical marijuana and casino gambling after advocates for both announced Thursday that they have enough signatures to put them on the November ballot.

According to the AP, organizers of the Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana campaign said they’ve gathered 182,000 signatures. To qualify for the ballot, the campaign needed to turn in more than 121,000 valid signatures, representing more than 10% of the voters in the state. Campaign officials also needed to collect signatures from at least 5% of voters in at least 38 Nebraska counties.

“Today represents a huge step forward for thousands of Nebraskans who deserve compassion,” said state Sen. Anna Wishart, of Lincoln, who co-chaired the campaign committee. “We are confident that we’ve met the requirements for ballot qualification, and after seeing the outpouring of support for our petition, we’re even more confident that Nebraska’s voters will approve this initiative in November.”

Meanwhile, the pro-gambling group Keep the Money in Nebraska announced that it will submit 475,000 signatures for its three petitions to allow casino gambling at horse-racing tracks. One petition seeks to amend the state constitution to allow gambling, one would change state law to authorize and regulate the casinos, and the third would direct the tax revenue into a property tax credit fund and toward local governments. The constitutional amendment proposal garnered more than 205,000 signatures, while the two other gambling-related measures each received more than 135,000.

The chief executive officer of independent cannabis retailer Fire and Flower Holdings said this week Canada needs 4,000 pot shops in order to compete with the country’s still-thriving black market. 

In an interview with BNN Bloomberg, Trevor Fencott said the Canadian illicit market for weed is still more efficient than the legal one, which has suffered numerous setbacks since legalization took effect nearly two years ago. The slow rollout of pot shops has been the most commonly-cited culprit behind the less-than-stellar performance of legal marijuana companies. 

“The most efficient market out there is the illicit market. It’s not regulated, but it is efficient. Prohibition or enforcement alone don’t work. You need to compete with the illicit market head-on economically,” Fencott explained. 

In order to achieve this, Fencott suggests Canada should follow Colorado’s model – where one dispensary is opened for every 10,000 residents. This means Canada would need to open as many as 4,000 dispensaries, while less than 1,000 have been opened to date. 

“The way we see this going is that cannabis is ultimately going to be a convenience commodity. You have to give people multiple access points to the product that they want to buy, especially if you want to compete with the illicit market,” he said. 

More radical change to drug policy could be coming to Oregon after the November federal election.

The Drug Addiction Treatment and Recovery Act, which would decriminalize drugs in the state, qualified for the ballot after it amassed a total of 116,622 valid signatures of support, per the Oregon Secretary of State.

The Act would downgrade possession of most drugs from a crime to a violation. For example, a person found guilty of being in possession of a Schedule I, II, or III drug, a Class A misdemeanor, can face one year in jail and a US$6,250 fine. Under the act, the same offence would be reclassified as a Class E violation, resulting in a fine of $100 or a completed health assessment.

Possession of a Schedule IV drug, formerly punishable by 30 days in jail and a $1,250 fine, would also convert to a Class E violation, leading to a $100 fine or health assessment.

“Oregonians have always been early adopters of drug policies that shift the emphasis towards health and away from punishment,” managing director of criminal justice law and policy at Drug Policy Action  Theshia Naidoo told Talking Drugs in March.  “The idea behind this groundbreaking effort is simple: people suffering from addiction need help, not criminal punishments. Instead of arresting and jailing people for using drugs, the measure would fund a range of services to help people get their lives back on track.”

In a bid to win over still-skeptical progressives, Joe Biden on Wednesday unveiled a set of policy proposals that moved him more closely aligned with his one-time rival, Bernie Sanders. But on the matter of marijuana, the former vice president and presumptive Democratic nominee remains miles away from legalization.

The proposals were detailed in a lengthy document born out of a Biden-Sanders task force that tackled a number of policy issues—from criminal justice to climate change. According to the New York Times, Biden is “expected to adopt many of the recommendations.” The Times noted that some of the recommendations, such as economics and the environment, “include broader and costlier plans than [Biden] has championed so far in his campaign.” 

But the Biden and Sanders camps remain at loggerheads over a number of areas, including cannabis policy. Sanders has long championed legalizing marijuana on the federal level, where it remains on the list of banned substances. In unveiling his own comprehensive plan on drug policy last fall, Sanders vowed to “legalize marijuana and end the horrifically destructive war on drugs,” which he said “has disproportionately targeted people of color and ruined the lives of millions of Americans.” Biden has steadfastly resisted legalization, a position he reiterated in a clumsy interview last month on “The Breakfast Club.” 

Decriminalization Over Legalization

The policy paper released Wednesday by the Biden campaign falls well short of legalization, too, asserting instead that “Democrats will decriminalize marijuana use and reschedule it through executive action on the federal level,” while also saying they support the “legalization of medical marijuana.” On the matter of recreational legalization, however, the paper says only that “states should be able to make their own decisions,” which is more or less how marijuana policy has operated in the U.S. since 2012, when Colorado and Washington voters passed measures ending the prohibition in their states.

Marijuana is listed as a schedule I drug under the federal Controlled Substances Act, a category that also includes heroin. As defined by the law, schedule I drugs have “ a high potential for abuse,” and “no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the U.S.” 

Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman is urging state lawmakers to legalize the adult use of cannabis as a way to reduce the impact of a looming budget deficit. The state faces a budget shortfall of $3.2 billion, largely as a result of the continuing COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the economy.

Fetterman took to Twitter last week, calling for the legalization of marijuana as a path to new tax revenue for the state and reform of the state’s penal system as a way to realize budget cost savings.

“I don’t know who needs to hear this jk I know who—but earnestly reforming our state prison system + legalization of marijuana could generate half of this COVID-19 deficit,” Fetterman tweeted on July 2. “It would, however, could have other unintended consequences like justice and personal freedom.”

“If only there was a widely-consumed unregulated cash crop, wholly confined to the black market, that could generate billions of dollars + 1000’s of jobs + help PA farmers,” he wrote in another tweet the same day.

Lt. Governor Says A Majority Of Pennsylvanians Support Legalization

The Democratic lieutenant governor continued his call for the legalization of recreational cannabis on Tuesday with Pittsburgh local media.

Professor Rudolf Brenneisen of the Swiss Society of Cannabis in Medicine tells us about medical cannabis in Switzerland.

The Swiss Society of Cannabis in Medicine (SSCM), the Swiss ambassador organisation of the International Association for Cannabinoid Medicines, aims to see cannabis recognised and regulated as a legitimate form of medicine in Switzerland. MCN speaks with Professor Rudolf Brenneisen, Editor-in-Chief of the SSCM’s peer-reviewed trade journal Medical Cannabis and Cannabinoids, about medical cannabis and cannabinoids in Switzerland.

What are the key benefits of cannabis in medical treatment?

Cannabis can have a plethora of effects – although this does not mean it is a panacea. It can have therapeutic benefits across a broad spectrum of indications, including chronic and neuropathic pain; nausea, vomiting and appetite loss; neurological conditions; chronic inflammation; and more. Cannabis and cannabinoids – primarily THC and CBD – have a broad therapeutic window: this means that they only carry a very marginal risk of physical or organ toxicity, and the risk of potential psychological side effects is low to medium and dependent on the dose. The typical psychotropic side effects of THC may be ameliorated by combining it with a dose of CBD.

Are there challenges or side effects specific to cannabis as a medicinal product?

One really challenging aspect of cannabis is evaluating all the different application forms in order to determine which is optimal for medicinal use. The selection of the medication type must ideally be based on patient and indication, though as some producers claim to offer between 1,000 and 2,000 individual types and chemovarieties, it is still essentially impossible to deliver cannabis-based treatment which is uniquely ‘individualised’ for the patient.

Cannabis and its extracts can be available in the form of isolated single substances, such as THC or CBD; standardised extracts like Sativex®; and full spectrum preparations, such as cannabis flowers. The predominant application forms are:

Ever since the Spanish colonists began farming hemp in Mexico over 400 years ago, cannabis has been a delicate topic in the country – first used as a painkiller, then banned in 1920, and today, almost legal… but also, not at all. The marijuana (or marihuana) rules are hazy, and the consequences of breaking them are no joke. We broke down the top three things you need to know before using cannabis South of the Border.

These laws only apply to the use of cannabis inside the country. Bringing cannabis of any amount or any kind – recreational or medical – across the border into Mexico is considered international drug trafficking, and can lead to arrest.

1) Medicinal marijuana use is not legal (yet)

In a nearly unanimous vote in 2017, medical marijuana (or, more specifically, “pharmaceutical derivatives of cannabis“) were made legal in Mexico. But, there’s a catch: the Mexican Ministry of Health still needs work out some specifics. This means that it is still illegal for patients to obtain medical marijuana or for doctors to prescribe it, and it won’t be legal until the Ministry of Health produces guidelines for it. Even then, though, the law stipulates that the cannabis derivatives (oils, capsules, etc.) will be required to contain less than one percent THC.

2) Possessing small amounts of recreational marijuana won’t send you to jail

Policing reform may have passed the House on a mostly party-line vote, but the battle isn’t over, especially for pro-cannabis lawmakers who argue the failed ‘war on drugs’ has fueled racial tension in low-income communities across the nation for decades now.

After being rebuffed by congressional leaders who asked that amendments on cannabis not be offered in the midst of the historic policing reform debate at the Capitol, pro-cannabis lawmakers are vowing to redouble their efforts to get federal decriminalization (if not outright legalization, which remains their ultimate goal) passed by the end of this year.

While Correa raised his marijuana decriminalization amendment in the House Judiciary Committee, he ultimately pulled it after party leaders asked that the legislation stay focused merely on items like banning chokeholds and ending qualified immunity (political-speak for allowing officers to do basically whatever they want without fear of punishment).

But with cannabis and drug arrests of minorities across the US drawing condemnation from international bodies (namely, the United Nations), a growing number of officials and advocates are demanding that overhauling drug laws be a part of any policing reform in the future.

Still, drawing national media attention to the practice of no-knock warrants – along with actually passing the legislation out of the House – is seen as a win. In part because even most lawmakers can’t comprehend the practice.

Nestled near the confluence of the Susquehanna and Chenango rivers in Upstate New York, the city of Binghamton and the surrounding county, Broome, was always a hotbed of agriculture and manufacturing. From the rivers to railroads to highways, the area has been at the hub of transportation networks and grew steadily through the 20th century.

Part of New York’s Southern Tier region along the Pennsylvania border, it was the home of the Endicott Johnson Shoe Company, IBM and later, the flight simulator, which was invented and continued to be manufactured in Binghamton. The area boomed through the Cold War era, in part because of its defense-heavy industries, earning it the nickname “The Valley of Opportunity.”

But after the fall of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, things began to change and both the city and the region experienced a decline in population and money. The shoe factory once employed more than 15,000, but declined and finally closed in 1998. IBM saw its workforce drop from more than 16,000 in the 1980s to a few hundred before it finally sold the plants in 2002.

“You really saw in the late-’80s and through the mid-’90s the manufacturing sector kind of hollowed out,” says current Broome County Executive Jason Garner.

“We’re a manufacturing community that lost its manufacturing base, not unlike Rochester which lost Kodak, or other places that lost major anchors,” agrees Assemblywoman Donna Lupardo, who represents the area in the New York Legislature. “We were the home of IBM and the Endicott Johnson Shoes that collectively employed (thousands of) people that are no longer employed.”

With a national referendum just three months away, a new poll has found a growing majority of New Zealand voters are in favour of legalizing cannabis for adults.

In May, the New Zealand government revealed the final draft of a cannabis reform bill that included a framework for a regulated adult-use market.

Kiwis will have the option to vote yes or no on the cannabis legislation in a referendum as part of the Sept. 17 national election. Although the referendum is non-binding, the country’s current coalition government has pledged to enact the bill should the referendum be successful and they remain in power.

If the law passes it would not alter New Zealand’s medical cannabis regulations that came into effect April 1.

The new poll found 56 per cent of respondents plan to vote in favour of legal weed, up from 54 per cent in February. The independent survey of nearly 1,600 Kiwis was conducted in June by Horizon Research and commissioned by licensed medical cannabis company Helius Therapeutics.

For more than 14 years, the tiny, poor Balkan country of North Macedonia has been trying to edge its way into the EU. Now, with just over two million inhabitants, and legislation to run a global medical cannabis market, North Macedonia is fighting corruption to prove that big things can come in very small packages.

In Macedonia, cannabis is illegal for recreational use. There are no personal use or decriminalization laws. It cannot be bought, sold, grown, or used legally by private residents for recreational purposes. Prison sentences for being caught breaking cannabis laws can go up to 10 years.

Medical cannabis in North Macedonia

In 2016, a North Macedonian Health Committee approved an amendment to the laws governing the control of psychotropic substances, allowing for cannabis to be used legally for medicinal purposes. Both ruling and opposition parties were in favor of the change. Part of the reasoning behind the necessity of the law, was to make it so that people who were already using such products illegally to self-medicate, could get better results with medical supervision.

The new laws allowed oils and extracts with .2% THC or lower to be sold without a prescription, and those containing greater than that amount to require a prescription. According to the law, the only doctors capable of writing prescriptions for cannabis products are: radiologists, oncologists, neurologists, and infectious disease specialists.

To give an idea where North Macedonians themselves stood on the issue of legalizing for medicinal use before it happened, a poll from the previous year published by the M-Prosepekt agency, found that 70% of those polled were for the legalization. This number was up 20% from a similar poll done in 2013.

Medical cannabis production in North Macedonia

Along with opening up the laws to allow for residents to have access to medical marijuana, North Macedonia also opened up its laws for the cultivation, production, and exportation of cannabis products.

In response to the COVID-19 emergency, the FDA is announcing a temporary policy regarding enforcement of the requirement for drug samples.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is issuing updated guidance to address questions they’ve received asking for clarification regarding their enforcement of requirements on the distribution of drug samples under the Prescription Drug Marketing Act (PDMA) of 1987 . The PDMA is part of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, and the relevant implementing regulations regarding drug samples are in 21 CFR part 203 (part 203), subpart D.

The relevance of this modification affects health care providers, patients affected by COVID-19 and related conditions, and the life science companies themselves, according to information highlighted in The National Law Review. 

The drug sample revisions, issued by the FDA earlier in June, affect how licensed practitioners provide care and consultation to their clients during a public health emergency. In response to the COVID-19 emergency, the FDA is announcing a temporary policy regarding enforcement of the requirement for drug samples. This policy covers samples only to be sent to the requesting healthcare practitioner licensed to prescribe the drug, or to a professional at the pharmacy of a hospital or health care entity.

Under the current FDA guidance during the public health emergency (PHE), the FDA clarified drug samples can not be distributed to licensed retail pharmacies. That set of regulations has effectively not changed.  

As calls for criminal justice reform sweep the nation, California is taking steps to reverse some effects of the war on drugs, which continues to disproportionately impact people of color.

California’s 58 county district attorneys had a deadline of Wednesday, July 1, to accept or challenge the state’s recommendation to clear the records of some 191,090 past marijuana convictions. The procedure was triggered by Proposition 64, a 2016 measure that legalized cannabis and reduced penalties for related crimes, and by Assembly Bill 1793, which requires justice officials to purge eligible crimes from people’s records.

Because local prosecutors agreed with the vast majority of the state’s recommendations, tens of thousands of Californians are now free of criminal records for cannabis charges. In many cases, the charges for the cases in question are no longer crimes, but the criminal records still could have meant lost job or housing opportunities or, for immigrants, led to their deportation.

“I think there’s been recognition by a lot of people that we needed to change things,” said Christopher Gardner, public defender for San Bernardino County.

Southern California DAs alone moved to dismiss or downgrade more than 100,000 marijuana charges as the July 1 deadline approached. In some cases, they found even more eligible cases than those flagged by the state. Riverside County, for example, recently adjusted 26,424 cannabis convictions — nearly four times more than the number identified by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra.

Health Minister Stephen Donnelly says he stands by a 2017 interview in which he admitted to smoking cannabis and visiting a strip club.

The Fianna Fail TD told Hot Press magazine he had tried marijuana – and was open to the idea of making it legal.

Minister Donnelly, 44, also hinted at experimenting with other substances during a Q&A interview given after he left the Social Democrats before joining Fianna Fail.

When asked if he’d ever tried any other drugs Minister Donnelly replied: “I have many years ago. I have but that’s all the detail I’m going to go into.”

Pressed for an answer as to whether he had ever taken cocaine, he said: “I’m just not going to go down any of those lines if that’s OK.”

A bill that would fully legalize hemp production throughout Hawaii is only a few steps away from becoming law, although many are unhappy with its final form.

A joint meeting of the state Senate Judiciary and Ways and Means committees approved House Bill 1819, which would end the state’s current Industrial Hemp Pilot Program and replace it with a general purpose hemp production program designed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Hemp was decriminalized nationwide by the USDA in 2018, but the state has not legalized its production beyond the Industrial Hemp Pilot Program, which has awarded licenses to growers throughout the state for the past two years. Of the 59 licenses awarded, 18 have been to growers on the Big Island.

However, Rep. Richard Creagan of Kailua-Kona, who co-introduced the bill and a similar measure in 2019, said the current state of the bill attracted criticism from hemp advocates who fear certain aspects of the measure will stifle production.

In particular, Creagan said, many testifiers took issue with a provision in the bill that sets mandatory buffer zones around any hemp production facility. Under the bill, hemp cannot be grown within 750 feet of property comprising a playground, child care facility or school nor within 250 feet of any existing residence not owned by the grower.

Municipalities in Illinois that have cannabis dispensaries will start seeing more money from recreational marijuana purchases. 

Cities, counties and villages that passed an individual 3% cannabis tax could start collecting it as of July 1. In the Metro East, that means more revenue for St. Clair County, Collinsville and Sauget, areas that passed a tax levy and where the region’s two current dispensaries operate.

Madison County won't collect an additional tax because county board members voted against allowing cannabis sales in unincorporated parts of the county last year.

While the tax increase will likely only be a few extra dollars per purchase, it represents more money for local city and county budgets at a time when some municipalities in the region have laid off workers or considered doing so because of the economic damage caused by the coronavirus.

So far, Collinsville has avoided layoffs by using the taxes it collects from cannabis sales to offset drops in other revenue sources, like sales tax, said City Manager Mitch Bair.

In Australia, the NT Farmers Association (NTFA) is encouraging agricultural producers in the Territory to take a crack at growing industrial hemp now that it is legal to do so with a licence.

The Northern Territory Government planted its first crop of industrial hemp in 2016, but it wasn’t until May 2019 that the Territory’s Hemp Industry Bill was tabled. The bill passed in August last year and the Hemp Industry Act and accompanying regulations came into effect in early May.

Now things are good to go, NT Farmers Association, the peak body for all plant-based industries in the Northern Territory, has been keen to promote the crop as an option for the Northern Territory’s farmers. It recently became a founding member of the Australia Hemp Council and has been working with researchers and industry to develop the NT’s competitive advantage.

One of the advantages the Territory has is the potential for two crops a year –  one potentially producing viable seed via a dry season (May–October) crop, and supplying that to other hemp farmers across Australia for summer planting.

“Hemp is an innovative new broadacre cropping opportunity which produces a versatile, environmentally sustainable and profitable products,” said the Association in a recent Facebook post. “NTFA are keen to work with interested producers to make this new opportunity a reality, so if you are keen to find out more or get in touch, email Andrew on kido@ntfarmers.org.au.”

A tax code provision means the federal government profits more from state-by-state legalization than any nationwide model.

Marijuana legalization has been touted as a possible solution to the American economy, which has faced an uphill battle toward recovery following the coronavirus pandemic.  While legalizing marijuana won’t fix every financial woe, the added tax revenue generated through legal cannabis sales and licensing could provide a helpful boost.

In states where cannabis is illegal for adult-use, lawmakers have already pushed cannabis reform legislation with this mindset. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham expressed regret in April that New Mexico had not legalized recreational cannabis before the pandemic. Her reason? The state would have an additional $100 million in its budget and recent projections show New Mexico will have a $100 million budget deficit in the upcoming fiscal year.

Bipartisan legislators in New York and Pennsylvania have taken similar stances, seeing legal cannabis as a quick salve to economic wounds.

“It’s not enough to say the state doesn’t have money. We have to find it,” said New York state Sen. Jessica Ramos. “I believe legalizing marijuana can help.”

Marijuana legalization is intrinsically tied to social justice.

However, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has maintained his opposition to making cannabis legal. Some hope that could change as more people become aware of the impact that the War on Drugs has had on people of color.

Even as he enjoys an early lead in election polls, people within his own party hope Biden will change his stance. That includes people working on his campaign who have made their support of cannabis legalization public. But any cannabis entrepreneur or investor considering the odds of Biden changing his mind need to look at the full picture of political realities.

First and foremost is the primary vote itself. Despite the fact his opponents took much more progressive stances on marijuana, Biden won.

As Vox noted: “The issue, apparently, wasn’t a major priority for Democratic voters during the primary. Biden still walked away with the most delegates to become the presumptive nominee. With a coronavirus pandemic and recession still underway, perhaps Biden is hoping the same will hold up in the general election, too.”