Mississippians prepare to protest in front of the governor’s mansion in Jackson, demanding Governor Tate Reeves to call a special session for the Mississippi Medical Cannabis Act.

Reeves told lawmakers that if both sides, Republican and Democrat, were able to come to a consensus and draft a bill for a medical cannabis program, he would call a special session.

It’s been three weeks since a consensus was reached and a bill submitted, and Reeves has yet to call a special session, prompting this upcoming protest.

“I hope he’s ready for karaoke because we’ve got loudspeakers; we’ve got tents. We’re going to be there until we get our session,” said Zack Wilson, Vice President of We are the 74.

Wilson’s group We are the 74, representing the 74% of Mississippians who voted for a medical cannabis initiative in the November 2020 elections that was later overturned in State Supreme Court, is heading for Jackson on Monday afternoon.

Sen. Mitch McConnell didn’t know what he was doing when he passed the 2018 Farm Bill. The bill included his provision that legalized industrial hemp, a form of cannabis that can be made into a wide variety of products including cannabidiol, a non-intoxicating cannabis compound commonly called CBD. That part was intentional — the law quickly launched a multi-billion dollar industry that put the once-obscure CBD compound into lattes, seltzers and hundreds of CVS stores across the country.

But after three years it appears one of the law’s biggest impacts was entirely unintentional: It accidentally created a booming market for synthetic THC, marijuana’s primary intoxicant. 

But chemists warn that these drugs can contain hazardous solvents, acids and unknown compounds. When FiveThirtyEight legally purchased hemp-derived THC products for testing, we found illegal levels of THC and a variety of mystery compounds that could not be identified. There are no federal safety testing requirements for these products, and while hemp companies occasionally publish test results, some brands have been caught using fake test documents.

The 2018 Farm Bill opened the market for online retailers to sell hemp derivatives that can get you high. 

Sales data for the unregulated hemp market is difficult to track but Delta-8-THC, the most popular of these hemp-derived intoxicants, is considered by some industry insiders to be the fastest growing product in the hemp industry. Google search data indicates that interest in these hemp-derived drugs is heavily concentrated in the American South, where conventional pot remains illegal, although hemp-derived THC is also showing up in state-regulated marijuana markets. In Washington state, regulators clarified in April that it was illegal to convert CBD into Delta-9-THC after a company admitted it was converting CBD into Delta-9-THC and selling it in the recreational marijuana market. Sales at licensed dispensaries of products containing Delta-8-THC in their titles increased over 240 percent between the second quarters of 2020 and 2021, according to the data firm Headset.

There’s still deep disagreement over whether any of these hemp-derived THC products are actually legal, but McConnell’s loophole has allowed these drugs to proliferate widely across the country. The hemp industry has quickly moved past selling just Delta-8-THC and is now offering an increasingly long list of synthetic cannabinoids that they can ship directly to your door. Meanwhile, cannabis insiders are warning that the country could be on the verge of a bigger public health emergency than 2019’s vape crisis, which ultimately hospitalized thousands and killed at least 68 people.

 Some Stamford representatives want to prevent people from smoking marijuana in certain parts of the city, including on school property, but it’s unclear if they have to do anything to make such activity illegal.

Vitaly Fargesen and Igor Palatnik, both of New Jersey, are accused of soliciting funds based upon false and misleading representations of their company, CanaFarma. The two also are charged with failing to invest solicited funds as promised and manipulating the public stock price of the company, according to a now-unsealed indictment handed down by a grand jury in the Southern District of New York.

CanaFarma initially sold a hemp-infused chewing gum under the brand name Yooforic, and later added hemp-based tinctures and skin creams. While the company marketed itself as a “fully integrated cannabis company addressing the entire cannabis spectrum from seed to delivery of consumer product,” in reality, all of the products came from third-party vendors, the indictment alleges.

Through a New York hemp grower, the company harvested 128,000 pounds of hemp in 2019, but didn’t process or sell any of it, or use it in any product, prosecutors alleged. The company never built a hemp processing plant, despite claims to investors that the business plan included having a “Fully Certified Clean Processing Facility.”

An attorney for Fargesen, Jeffrey Lichtman, wrote in an email: “We were greatly disappointed to see charges brought here despite cooperating with the government’s many information requests over the past year or so.”

He continued, “As will be revealed at trial, the government’s indictment relies almost exclusively on two rogue employees who managed to loot the company before running into the arms of the government and admitting their own fraud.”

The Government has started a consultation process to explore the possibilities for the development of an industrial fibre sector using hemp.

Advocates for the sector including Hemp Cooperative Ireland, whose members include farmers, engineers and scientists, argue that Irish-grown hemp has significant potential as a renewable agricultural cash crop suitable for industrial applications including building insulation, cloth making and even low-carbon cement production. 

While hemp can be produced here and was once widely grown for rope making, its closeness to cannabis means even industrial use is effectively banned under drugs legislation. 

However, the Programme for Government, published last year, committed to exploring the potential for growing fibre crops such as hemp and to consider whether the crops have a viable market.

Hemp growing by farmers is subject to the granting of a licence by the Health Products Regulatory Authority, which operates under the auspices of the Department of Health.

 A county in southern Oregon says it's so overwhelmed by an increase in the number and size of illegal marijuana farms that it declared a state of emergency Wednesday, appealing to the governor and the Legislature's leaders for help.

Illegal marijuana grows have been a persistent problem throughout the West, even in states like California that have legalized pot. A megadrought across the West has created urgency, though, as illegal growers steal water, depriving legal users including farmers and homeowners of the increasingly precious resource.

Only four Oregon Water Resources Department full-time employees handle complaints and perform all of their other duties in Jackson County and neighboring Josephine County, the commissioners said.

Josephine County has also been hurt by illegal grows that have drained creeks and siphoned off groundwater. Josephine County Sheriff Dave Daniel believes there are hundreds of illegal operations in his county alone. One with 72,000 marijuana plants that was drawing water from the Illinois River was raided after a dying person who worked there was dropped off in a nearby village.

Oregon voters made producing, processing, selling and using recreational marijuana legal in a ballot measure in 2014. Pot businesses must be registered with the state, which enforces compliance with rules. But some growers and processers remain outside the law, joined by a recent influx of outsiders in Jackson and Josephine counties who seek large profits by selling on the black market outside of Oregon while avoiding state taxes and regulations.

 The legalization of recreational marijuana through Proposition 207 in 2020 opened a lot of doors for people with past low-level marijuana convictions.

Nowadays, thousands of people have already applied for expungement under the voter-passed initiative, but not everyone can get their charges tossed out, including a Phoenix entrepreneur who says the same cannabis industry that is bringing in big money today almost cost him everything a decade ago.

"On my record right now, I have 15 total felony convictions from 1996 to now. It's all pot-related," said Martin.

The problem was: Martin was not partnered with a licensed dispensary and the police came knocking.

"It was all police," Martin recounted. "Four jurisdictions, and guns held in my kids' faces for a plant that's supposed to save my life."

Once the bill is signed into law, Panama will be in a somewhat odd situation: It will gave a legal regime for medical cannabis, but not one for hemp.

Back in October 2019, Deputy Kayra Harding introduced a bill (Proyecto de Ley No. 323) to promote the development of the hemp industry in Panama. The bill would establish a licensing regime for hemp cultivation and processing. Hemp is defined as cannabis whose THC content does not exceed 1.5% on a dry weight basis. However, legislative consideration of the bill has been slow.

Last October, government and legislative representatives agreed to establish a subcommission to “enrich” the bill. According to commentator Rafael Carles, it is ignorance when it comes to hemp and how it differs from marijuana that is behind the delays. At the same time, there are concerns within the Panamanian citizenry that the development of the hemp industry will only advance powerful business interests. These two explanations are not mutually exclusive, as demonstrated by this reader comment on a recent Carles column:

“Beware Panama! Now entrepreneurs want to make a profit from your vices, it is not just alcohol and beer. Now it is with drugs, but with a different name, calling the marijuana plant hemp.”

It does not help that Panama’s medical cannabis legalization has been tainted by accusations of corruption. According to one report, Canadian company Canna Med Panama, SA “was not only attentive to the debates in the National Assembly to approve Bill 153, which seeks to regulate the use of medicinal cannabis, but also sponsored a trip to Louisiana by five officials, some key in making decisions about the future business of the use of cannabis for medicinal purposes.”

Photo by Francisco Rioseco via Unsplash

Oklahoma, Colorado and Missouri allow sale of pot for health purposes.

Advocates of legalizing marijuana sales formed the Kansas Cannabis Chamber of Commerce to move the political, business and health debate forward in a state bordered by dispensaries in Colorado, Oklahoma and Missouri and a renewed push to open markets in Nebraska.

The Kansas House overwhelmingly approved a bill during the 2021 session that would have created a highly regulated medical cannabis structure, but it wasn’t taken up by the Kansas Senate. Gov. Laura Kelly said she would sign medical marijuana legislation, if the Legislature sent a package to her desk. Polling last year indicated two-thirds of Kansas adults supported legalization of marijuana sales.

Heather Steppe, president of the new chamber of commerce, said the idea was to model the business organization on the array of groups that formed industry coalitions to press for government policy reform. She said Kansas should avoid being left out in the cold as dozens of states moved on with development of industries to grow, manufacture, transport and market cannabis for medicinal benefit.

“We’re not inventing the wheel,” Steppe said. “We’re just trying to, you know, grease it up and get it working for Kansas.”

Which States Will Legalize Recreational Weed Next?

Gone are the days when predictions on state legislations could be given based on the ruling party. The stereotypical belief of States being red or blue has been tossed out over time, especially in talks regarding cannabis legalization.

Everyone wants a piece of the cake.

There is a long list of states that may be the next to legalize the use, possession, and cultivation of recreational cannabis in the United States of America. While some are going to have to do through the ballot boxes, others may do so through their legislature. The point is these states are after the same thing, which is the establishment of a functioning recreational cannabis industry.

The reluctance of the presidency and the national legislature to decriminalize cannabis has not deterred these states from wanting to join the cannabis organization trend.

Cannabis legalization remains a controversial topic, which is why most politicians are willing to let voters take the lead on the issue, while they follow.

The Wind Of Cannabis Legalization

The United States is at a point where even the masses want cannabis legalized for recreational use. Just this year alone, about four states made marijuana legal. These states include New York, Virginia, Connecticut, New Mexico. This makes the total number of states with recreational laws 19 states.

Recently introduced legislation in the state House of Representatives would allow school nurses to administer medical marijuana to students.

Current state law allows a parent, guardian or caregiver to come onto school grounds to administer medical marijuana to students during the school day. Parents have to provide the school principal with a Safe Harbor Letter, notify the school principal in advance of each instance when the parent or caregiver will administer medical marijuana to their child, with the principal in turn notifying the school nurse.

State guidance stipulates parents have to follow all school protocols that apply to school visitors, administer the medical marijuana without creating a distraction and promptly remove any medical marijuana and materials from the school grounds. Schools are also required to provide a secure and private location for the parent to administer medical marijuana to their child. Students are not allowed to possess any form of medical marijuana on school grounds or during school activities on school property.

Kenyatta’s bill would authorize school nurses to administer medical marijuana and waive a caregiver fee if a nurse is administering the marijuana instead of a parent.

The bill has been referred to the House Health Committee, which is chaired by Rep. Kathy Rapp, R-Warren.

The El Paso Police Department is looking to ask City Council to raise its budget by $72,000 next year to allow the department to test marijuana cases at a lab."Marijuana and hemp are very much so identical one of the only characteristics that differs hemp from marijuana is the amount of THC," said Sgt. Robert Gomez, an EPPD spokesman. The difference between marijuana and hemp products is the level of THC in them. In Texas, the legal quantity for THC is 0.3% anything more and it gets qualified as illegal. The major problem not only for EPPD - but also for other police departments across the state - is distinguishing illegal marijuana from legal hemp, and only a lab can make that determination.

"Any amount of THC was illegal in the past, so really the testing was more simple: it was more present or not present. So now that we have to have a specific amount of THC to classify as an illegal substance more quantitative testing needs to be done," Gomez said.

The proposal to City Council is to increase the police budget by $360,000 over the next five years as part of a contract with a lab.

"It has to do with arresting practices, it has to do with the law change - what the law requires for us to seek prosecution. So that is really what this increase in the budget is - it doesn't mean that we are arresting more or not, it just means that the evidence we have to present has to be within the law, which in turn costs more," Gomez explained.

"DPS is still not testing small amounts of marijuana, therefore, these cases cannot be prosecuted without
the lab results as they are the key evidence to obtaining a conviction," Paul Ferris, a spokesperson for the District Attorney's Office said. "The few labs that exist for testing drug cases have indicated that the priority for testing will be the big marijuana cases, and if there is funding available after testing these bigger drug cases, then they will begin testing the smaller cases."

Prior to 1913, marijuana was legal nationwide. Motivated by anti-immigrant sentiment resulting from an influx of Mexican immigration after the Mexican War in 1910, states started to outlaw marijuana. By 1931, 29 states effectively outlawed it. The Controlled Substance Act of 1970 officially banned marijuana federally, as part of the government’s War on Drugs effort.

These policies have caused incredible suffering through the loss of lives and livelihood—police violence against black and minority communities, poverty, asset forfeiture, mass imprisonment, and health hazard through adulterated black-market products, to name a few.

However, 2020 was a big year for drug legalization, especially marijuana legalization, and 2021 seems likely to continue that trend. However, layers of regulatory inconsistency have imposed a de facto barrier in the production, distribution, and consumption of marijuana or marijuana-based products in the legal context. There is a lot more work to be done.

For example, the 2018 Farm Bill legalized hemp, a marijuana derivative containing only 0.3 percent THC. Yet hemp farmers struggle to find banks to keep their legal business afloat. Erik Bogard, president of the hemp processing company Columbus Naturals, said: “I called probably 20 different companies and got denied 19 different times before I found someone, and it’s probably 10 times the cost of what it would be if we weren’t dealing with hemp.”

The strict 0.3 percent threshold is difficult to maintain since the concentration level varies depending on the growth period and harvesting environment. Testing requirements are not clearly laid out either. The Farm Bill puts the USDA in charge of setting testing regimes while the FDA and DEA are involved in other parts of regulating the derivates of marijuana.

A former federal law enforcement officer turned Pennsylvania lawmaker became the second Republican state senator to publicly endorse legalizing recreational marijuana in the Keystone State.

York County state Sen. Mike Regan, the chairman of the Senate Law and Justice Committee, circulated a co-sponsorship memo late Monday to colleagues soliciting support for a bill to legalize marijuana for those 21 and older.

He said the revenue could be used to fund police, fight violent crime in cities and pay for afterschool programs in disadvantaged neighborhoods. 

“Our law enforcement agencies and justice system do not have the manpower or time to handle these minor marijuana offenses that clog our courts and produce little return,” he wrote.

“Instead, police and prosecutors need to focus on protecting our residents from the violent criminals and large-scale drug importers that are also dealing in heroin and fentanyl, which kill thousands of Pennsylvanians each year.”

More than six months after Texas legalized hemp, marijuana prosecution cases fell dramatically, with prosecutors filing fewer criminal charges while unleashing a struggle for police departments who now need to test substances in private labs, in order to prove illegal marijuana possession.

Since Gov. Greg Abbott signed the legalization of hemp at the beginning of June, focusing on agricultural practices and regulations, the number of misdemeanor marijuana possession cases dropped nearly two-thirds across Texas.

In 2018, Texas prosecutors filed about 5,900 new misdemeanor marijuana possession cases a month, as reported by the Texas Tribune, the first five months of 2019 saw an average of more than 5,600 new cases filed a month.

However, since June -when the hemp law was enacted- the number of cases has been slashed by more than half. In November, less than 2,000 new cases were filed, according to court data.

“In 2019, #txlege legalized hemp and threw into chaos the prosecution of marijuana crimes. From 2018 to 2019, pot possession arrests plummeted from 62.9k to 45.1k. In 2020, that number kept falling. @TxDPS reported 23.7k arrests statewide”. Reporter Jolie McCullough tweeted.

They hit the throttle and sped through pitch-black water. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) officers spotted a vessel of some sort in the distance, near the uninhabited Celeron Island in the Detroit River at 2:35 a.m., June 5, 2020.

Market dynamics steer smugglers to Michigan, and ‘submersible watercraft’

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