WeedLife News Network

Different ways to be legal

Not only does every country have its own laws regarding the use, possession, sale, cultivation, and import/export of cannabis, but often these categories too can be broken down further into medical legalizations, recreational legalizations, and even religious legalizations, each with its own set of laws concerning use, possession, sale, cultivation, and import/export.

Right now, in terms of full recreational legalizations, there are only a few places that apply. Uruguay; Canada; the US states that have independently legalized; Mexico, although until legislation comes out in December, it’s technically only a judicial legalization, with no regulated system for sale of products; and Canberra, Australia’s capital city. Then there’re places like Washington DC, and Georgia (the country, not the state), which have wonkier recreational legalizations. In DC, a person can possess and use, but can’t buy or sell, although cultivation is legal. In Georgia, it’s the same, but without the cultivation part, making for a strange system where using a product is actually legal, but there is no legal way to obtain it.

When it comes to medical legalizations, these have become ubiquitous in the world. From South American countries like Argentina and Uruguay; to the majority of European countries; to Australia & New Zealand; to African countries like Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Lesotho, though these countries don’t always guarantee the use of cannabis for their own people, and are more geared toward the business end, and exportation to other markets. Nearly every US state has medical legalization; even some Asian countries like Thailand; and Middle Eastern countries like Lebanon, which just became the first of the region (apart from Israel) to allow this.

And then there are the more elusive religious legalizations, which have been coming into play more recently. The most well-known religion to use cannabis sacramentally is Rastafarianism, although others do exist. Due to the Rastafarian religion, countries like Jamaica and Barbados have specific laws that allow the use of cannabis for religious purposes. And though there isn’t an actual written law attached to it, Nepal allows cannabis to be smoked without harassment by law enforcement, for one day a year to celebrate the Mahashivrati festival.

Where can you fly with cannabis

To be clear, there are no legalized locations – recreational, medical, or religious – that have laws allowing the transport of cannabis across country borders. What this means is, whatever the legalization policy, and whatever might be allowed within a country’s borders, this has no bearing on anything, anywhere else. No country will allow you to legally cross its border with cannabis. To make it even more clear, even if a person is attempting to fly with cannabis from one recreational legalized location to another – let’s say Toronto to California, this too is not possible.

A Michigan man who has spent a quarter of a century behind bars for a nonviolent marijuana offense could see a change in his fate this week as a parole board considers his release. Michael Thompson, a native of Flint, Michigan, was convicted in 1994 of selling three pounds of marijuana to an undercover police informant.

Michael Thompson, now 69, was given a sentence of 42 to 62 years for the conviction, a term compounded by previous drug convictions and a weapons enhancement for firearms discovered when his home was raided. But the nonviolent nature of his offense coupled with the legalization of marijuana in Michigan has led to a drive to see Thompson, who isn’t technically eligible for parole until he is 87 years old, released from prison early. In January, Thompson’s attorney filed a request for commutation of his client’s sentence.

Michigan AG ‘Shocked And Horrified’ By Sentence

It’s an effort supported by state Attorney General Dana Nessel, who wrote a letter to Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in August asking that Michael Thompson’s sentence be commuted so he can be released on time served.

“Sometimes you hear something about a particular person who’s incarcerated and then once you look further, you’re like, maybe this person deserves to do a little time,” Nessel said. “But I was shocked and horrified when I looked at his sentence.”

“I have practiced law for 27 years now and I’ve never seen anything like it,” she added.

Visitors heading to Hawaii may now participate in the islands’ medical cannabis program. The Hawaii State Department of Health has announced that Out-of-State medical cannabis patients may now apply online for a 329-V card. The new card provides visiting patients with legal access to Hawaiiʻs medical cannabis dispensaries for up to 60 days. The Hawaii Educational Association for Therapeutic Healthcare (HEALTH), the state’s trade association for licensed dispensaries, supported the announcement and has been working to prepare for the increase in demand for medical cannabis in Hawaii.

“As Hawaii’s medical cannabis dispensary program continues to grow, we are happy the program will be extended to visitors from out of state so that visitors with debilitating diseases, chronic pain, PTSD and other conditions can continue to receive the therapeutic effects of cannabis while in Hawaiiʻi,” said Pedro Haro, Executive Director of HEALTH. “This is a major milestone for integrative healthcare options in the islands and for our visitor industry as a whole.”

Hawaii’s first state-licensed medical cannabis dispensaries opened during the summer of 2017 to serve residents. During the 2018 legislative session, government officials worked with the industry and patient advocates to pass House Bill 2729, which established the 329-V card program to provide Out-of-State Patients (OSPs) with legal access to medical cannabis dispensaries while visiting the islands.

“We are particularly pleased with the advances that the Department of Health has made towards modernizing the process for which both locals and visitors are able to obtain their medical cannabis cards,” said Haro. “They have worked seamlessly to provide a completely digital platform for patients, which makes it all the more efficient to apply and receive a card”.

The 329-V card will allow visitors to shop at any of Hawaii’s medical cannabis dispensaries and legally possess cannabis or cannabis products for up to 60 days at a time. Out-of-State patients must complete a 10-minute online application with the Department of Health. Applications may be submitted up to 60 days in advance of arrival in Hawaiiʻi and patients may select a start date. To be eligible, visiting patients must have a valid medical registration card from a U.S. state or territory, a valid government-issued photo ID from the same state, and they must attest they use cannabis for one or more of the qualifying conditions recognized by Hawaii. The fee is $49.50 for a 329-V card, which is valid for 60 days and may be renewed one additional time.

CBD products have become incredibly popular thanks to new legislation legalizing hemp-derived products with minimal THC content. The popularity of CBD is also attributable to the number of people experiencing benefits from it; CBD is being used to alleviate anxiety, help people sleep, and give people a deeper sense of wellness and relaxation.

But what does the future hold for this industry? Is CBD just a fad, or will it continue growing in popularity? And how will innovators direct the development of this market?

Product Innovation

First, let’s take a look at the area of product innovation. Already, there is a wide range of different CBD products available for consumers to try. You can buy and smoke CBD flower, just as you can buy and smoke weed, but most people prefer a different delivery system due to concerns about smoke and lung health. 

Instead, many people are turning to full spectrum CBD oil, an extract designed to provide you with a full spectrum of different cannabinoids (except THC, of course), in a much cleaner, more efficient delivery system. We’re also seeing the development and circulation of topical forms of CBD, including creams, and CBD cartridges for vaporizers.

Nearly seven in 10 Americans now support legalizing marijuana nationwide, according to a Gallup poll released on Monday.

Overall, 68 percent of respondents said they favor legalizing cannabis for adult use, which is “Gallup's highest reading” since the firm started polling voters on the issue, it said. Last year, the survey found 66 percent support for legalization.

In 1969, only 12 percent of Americans favored legalizing marijuana. Today's level of support is double what it was in 2000.

The new poll shows majority backing for the policy change across all age demographics for the first time. However, support among Republicans dipped slightly compared to last year, from 51 to 48 percent.

Meanwhile, 83 percent of Democrats and 72 percent of independents said they back legalization, which Gallup says is the highest level of support it has ever recorded for those political groups.

Left-leaning policy wonks call it the biggest political layup of our time. It enjoys rare bipartisan support in a time of rancorous political division. It would lower rates of incarceration among people of color and chip away at the prison industrial complex.

So why has cannabis not yet been legalized, or at least decriminalized, on the federal level?

Congress is poised to tackle the issue in December when it votes on the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act of 2019, aka the MORE Act. If passed, the decriminalization bill would impose sweeping changes to the ways weed functions in society, and offer a sign of retreat in the U.S. government’s decades-long war on drugs.

The Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act of 2019 is a bill sponsored by former Senator and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris that would decriminalize weed by removing it from the government’s list of controlled substances

In an effort to better share institutional knowledge and regulatory practices, Louisiana is one of 19 states that is now part of the newly formed non-partisan organization called the Cannabis Regulators Association (CANNRA).

The Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry (LDAF) which regulates medical marijuana in Louisiana will be represented by Medical Marijuana Program Director Tabitha Irvin, Esq. CANNRA is being established to assist federal, state, and local jurisdictions that have approved or are considering the legalization of medical and/or recreational cannabis, according to a spokesperson for LDAF.

“CANNRA is restricted to cannabis regulators to develop best practices and policies and also to support consistent regulatory actions,” said Agriculture and Forestry Commissioner Mike Strain, D.V.M.

Irvin added, “It is an honor to be a founding member of an organization that will develop standards in the industry and provides regulatory guidance to state and federal elected officials. We are also proud to collaborate and welcome the expertise of other states as we regulate products so they are safe for consumers."

For years, cannabis regulators across the country have relied on each other to share regulatory experiences, institutional expertise, and to provide assistance navigating the numerous evolving policy and regulatory issues associated with legalizing and regulating cannabis. Often the first step for state and local jurisdictions weighing legalization is to engage with regulators from established markets and programs. However, there has never been an organization to facilitate these interactions or help stakeholders find objective data and evidence-based approaches to policymaking and implementation.

In over 16 years in the NBA, Al Harrington played in more than 1,000 total games, made an appearance in 55 playoff matches, and scored over 13,000 points.

However, just by speaking to him, you’d be convinced that he wants to be known more for his success as a cannabis entrepreneur than his time on the court.

In 2011, while the former first round pick was still playing for the Denver Nuggets, Harrington launched Viola Brands, a cannabis company with a focus on social equity, named after his grandmother.

The move showed tremendous foresight by the former player, especially considering the widespread cannabis boom the city would see just a few years later.

Most of what’s gone on in the field of medicinal cannabis has been related to simply isolating and/or replicating a specific cannabinoid to get its benefits. In today’s world of cannabis medicine, the new thing is for a customer to order a premium blend of their favorite compounds, because today, you can actually customize your cannabinoids.

Isolating cannabinoids

There’s plenty in the worlds of medicinal cannabis and recreational marijuana that have nothing to do with isolating anything. If a person wants to smoke hemp flowers, or buy a few grams of high-THC weed, they’re getting the whole plant, no isolation needed. However, the fields of medical and recreational cannabis have been more and more reliant on the idea of isolated cannabinoids. CBD is the most popular right now, with CBD oil and vape cartridges flying off store shelves all over the world.

Much like with other forms of pharmaceutical medicine, where we often pop a pill without really thinking what that circular, chalky, perfectly-shaped tablet contains, where it came from, and how it got to be in the form we take it in, we don’t often question how our CBD oil came to be.

Cannabinoids don’t start out as cannabinoids, but rather as acids that must be heated – or decarboxylated – in order to form into the cannabinoids we are familiar with like THC, CBD, and even the rarer CGBV, and THCV. Solvents are then used to separate certain parts. These can include, ethanol, hydrocarbon (butane, propane…), chloroform, light petroleum, and CO2 – which doesn’t leave a residue.

After extraction with one of these solvents, the solution is filtered at least a couple times, generally through something like charcoal. Then it should be made more concentrated, down to about half the volume, using a 2% aqueous sodium sulfate solution. When the solvent is stripped out, and the solution is concentrated, its left as a crude oil. At this point it can even be purified further with redistillation or column chromatography.

Even without Congressional assistance, the president has the authority to initiate the process of getting marijuana rescheduled by the Controlled Substances Act. 

While it is still kind of hard to see through the funk of the 2020 election, rest assured it is over for Donald Trump. As of January 2021, President-elect Joe Biden will take his shot at making America great again.

It will be during his first 100 days, a period that typically sets the tone for the presidency, that America will get to see precisely what kind of leader it is dealing with. Some citizens hope to see action that will help rebuild an economy crushed by the dreaded COVID-19, others want an effective vaccine, and a good deal of the population just wants medical marijuana.

Although more than half the nation has laws on the books that allow people to use marijuana for medicinal use, the federal government isn’t as progressive. Cannabis remains a Schedule I dangerous drug within the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), which basically means that it is highly addictive and doesn’t possess any healing properties. But science disagrees. There is a growing body of evidence showing that marijuana can help patients treat a variety of health conditions ranging from insomnia to more life threatening illnesses. And as for all of that business about being “highly addictive,” even Uncle Sam admits that it is only about as habit forming as caffeine. 

Still, it would take an act of Congress to reschedule cannabis. Well, that or a highly motivated president. 

More Utah doctors will be able to recommend medical cannabis to qualifying patients, under a new bill being proposed.

The forthcoming legislation will allow physicians to recommend cannabis for up to 15 patients without having to go through hours of specialized training through the state. But if a doctor does, they can help up to 275 patients.

"We want to make the barrier to entry on the part of providers, prescribers, lower," said Rep. Ray Ward, R-Bountiful, who is co-sponsoring the bill with Senate Majority Leader Evan Vickers.

As FOX 13 reported in an investigation last year, qualifying patients still struggle across Utah to find doctors willing to recommend medical cannabis. Some don't want to go through so much paperwork and licensing for a handful of patients, while others are uneasy about recommending cannabis.

"This bottleneck that we have here, it is forcing patients to go outside and try to doctor shop which was never the intention," said Desiree Hennessy, the head of the Utah Patients Coalition, which sponsored Proposition 2 that legalized medical marijuana in Utah.

But, distributors could be faced with an even bigger issue.

There's no definite timeline for when medical dispensaries will be able to make the transition, but when they do, they may not be able to meet the high demand for cannabis.

Spencer Andrews is a public affair director for March and Ash, a dispensary in Imperial County. He addresses an important matter that happened when California made the switch.

"What we saw in California was a shortage in the supply chain. I mean, you're just working with many aspects of the supply chain: manufacturing, cultivation, testing, distribution," Andrews explained. "All of these ancillary services have to get up and running and be able to meet the demand."

All of these steps take time.

Sometime before Christmas, Richard DeLisi, 71, will finally be released from the Florida prison where he has lived since 1988.

DeLisi is serving a 90-year prison term for selling marijuana. He tried to sell quite a bit of it—1,500 pounds, as a Miami New Times profile recounts—but he was never charged with a violent crime. Nor was he alleged to have hurt anyone.

Marijuana legalization is very popular these days, and DeLisi has already served more than twice the average sentence for murder. So it seems reasonable and good that he’d be let out, to enjoy what time he has left in relative freedom.

For this, he has COVID-19 to thank—and not marijuana legalization.

Legalization is proving extremely effective at creating a new class of entrepreneurs and creating wealth for investors, but not very good at fulfilling some of its most basic promises.

Now that 15 states have legalized the use of recreational cannabis — and only six states still count it as fully illegal — industry experts say the federal government is facing more pressure to ease its tough standards on the use and sale of the drug.

President-elect Joe Biden has promised to tackle criminal justice reform — including marijuana laws, and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris was an early supporter of the MORE Act, which would lay the groundwork for federal decriminalization by expunging marijuana convictions and prohibiting the denial of benefits on the basis of a “cannabis-event.”

Businesses in the $17 billion cannabis industry would benefit from full legalization with easier investment and banking opportunities, much of which is regulated federally. And state and federal governments may profit from a simpler tax scheme on the drug.

“If you don’t allow that legal operation, somewhere in the community, the sales will continue,” Chris Lindsey, a legislative analyst of Marijuana Policy Project, told Marketplace.

Lindsey compares current federal cannabis policy to alcohol prohibition in the 1920s. Prohibition made it federally illegal to produce, import, transport, and sell alcoholic beverages but consumers were safe from prosecution. This led to criminal organizations controlling a black market and — most importantly — gaining all the profits.

Increased medical knowledge and changes in social norms have meant that over the last decade attitudes towards medical cannabis have changed exponentially. After speaking to clinicians and patients studies have concluded that while it may have once been taboo, medical cannabis is now believed to be a legitimate medical therapy by some. It may be much more accepted but few studies have looked into how patients use medical cannabis and whether men and women see it differently. A new study has found that a significant number of women would use cannabis to treat chronic conditions and pain. 

The study, which was published in the Journal of Women’s Health assessed the gendered attitudes patients have towards medical cannabis. It found that after obtaining a medical cannabis card women are more likely to cut down or discontinue using prescribed medication and medical assistance. The study was supported by research that suggested that while men are more likely to be experienced cannabis users more generally, women are more likely to substitute prescribed medications and painkillers for medical cannabis. 

Cannabinoids are compounds found in cannabis. Research has suggested that they could be a great painkiller. PMS and PMDD, endometriosis and some gynecological cancers are some of the conditions which can cause intimate and pelvic chronic pain. The study revealed that a substantial number of women would be open to using medical cannabis to treat pain, especially if they’d used it before. 

It’s not completely clear as to why women are more likely to swap out prescribed medication for medical cannabis. However, past research has found that women engage with complementary or alternative medicine differently to men. Women are more likely to access preventative services, use alternative medicine to treat pain, mental health conditions or insomnia and for headaches and migraines. As medical cannabis has increasingly been seen as a safe and legitimate treatment and news of the opioid crisis has spread it may now fall under the category of complementary or alternative medicine. 

The researchers wrote, “the implication that women may conceptualize medical cannabis as complementary or alternative medicine merits further research, as this finding may be viewed as a consequence of patient experience with cannabis, and not only of shifting public attitudes toward it.” 

State legislators are rekindling efforts to open New Mexico to recreational marijuana production and sales, with an emphasis on economic opportunity amidst the turmoil of the coronavirus pandemic.

State Rep. Javier Martinez told a panel of lawmakers Tuesday that he will introduce legislation in 2021 to regulate and tax recreational marijuana, hewing closely to a proposal that won House approval earlier this year but died in the Senate without a floor vote.

Elections this year ousted several conservative-leaning Democratic state senators who opposed past legalization efforts. Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham last week reiterated her support for recreational marijuana as an opportunity to expand and diversify the state economy.

“I think the prospect for a recreational bill to pass this year are looking much better,” said Democratic state Sen. Jacob Candelaria of Albuquerque, a sponsor of past recreational marijuana and drug decriminalization initiatives. “What matters most is just the numbers (of potential supporters) in the New Mexico Senate. I think we just have better numbers.”

Candelaria, a medical marijuana patient and attorney who represents current cannabis business license holders, urged the Lujan Grisham administration to lift what he called artificial limits on medical marijuana production to avoid shortages and costly delays in new tax revenue if recreational marijuana is approved by the House and Senate, where Democrats hold majorities.

As consumers increasingly shift to online ordering, click-and-collect, curbside pickup, and delivery, dispensaries must begin leveraging digital advertising options to drive online orders, keep their brands top-of-mind, and increase total sales revenue.

Industry insiders believe Democrat-held Congress would likely take up the SAFE Banking and MORE Acts, generating long-term market effects.

Despite ongoing attempts by the Trump Administration to delay the transition, President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris are expected to take power on January 20, 2021, creating an impact on the cannabis stock market that could be substantial. 

A Biden/Harris presidency could prove beneficial for a surging cannabis reform movement and its market after a clean sweep across five states on Election Day. Still, financial and legal experts point out that cannabis reform relies on more than the White House. As such, a delay in both reform and market impact could occur. 

Power, Potential Reform Remains In The Balance

The Biden White House should provide the marijuana market a bump of some form. However, its scope hinges on Biden, a decriminalization proponent, and the U.S. Senate’s power, which remains in limbo until January when two runoffs in Georgia are held. 

The results will determine if the Democrats control both chambers of Congress or Biden’s opposition from cannabis opponent Mitch McConnell.