WeedLife News Network

A new measure, proposed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, was approved by the California Legislature on Monday and aims to help legal cannabis operators acquire permanent licenses.

According to Newsom’s office, about 82% of the state’s legal operators still hold provisional licenses as of April 2021. These provisional licenses are due on Jan. 1, 2022.

Dealing with the bottleneck

While adult-use cannabis was made legal in the Golden State in 2016, most growers, retailers and manufacturers have been unable to transition from provisional licenses to permanent ones, which need to be renewed on an annual basis. 

This is due to the high cost of auditing operations to comply with environmental regulations, according to a report by the Los Ageles Times.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said the money is “essential in supporting a well-regulated, equitable, and sustainable cannabis market.”

Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards (D) has signed legislation into law, House Bill 391, repealing the state’s ban on herbal cannabis for medically authorized patients.

The new law, which takes effect on January 1, 2022, will for the first time allow state-registered patients to obtain “raw or crude” cannabis for the purpose of “inhalation.” The state’s access program currently limits patients to non-inhaled forms of cannabis, like infused oils.

Beginning next year, registered medical cannabis patients will be able to purchase up to two and a half ounces of medical cannabis flower per 14 day period from licensed providers.

Similar legislation legalizing medical cannabis flower was enacted in Minnesota earlier this year. Louisiana and Minnesota were among the only states barring medical cannabis patients from accessing flower.

Governor John Bel Edwards (D) also signed legislation into law last week removing the threat of jail time for low-level marijuana possession offenses. The reduced penalties law takes effect on August 1, 2021.

Backers of Missouri's successful 2018 ballot measure that legalized medical marijuana say they plan to unveil their next effort — an initiative petition targeting the 2022 ballot to legalize recreational use — by the end of June.

The timing will allow signature collection to begin in August, says John Payne, though he declined to specify details on possession and cultivation limits while the campaign's drafting committee is still finalizing the petition.

With Missouri dispensaries opening across the state, Payne says he's confident that residents are ready to expand cannabis legalization. If the measure is passed, Missouri would join fourteen states that have legalized recreational marijuana — including its neighbor Illinois, which Newsweek reports is on pace to finish the year with more than $1 billion in cannabis sales.

According to Payne, it was local polling in 2019 that showed "a strong majority that supports legalizing the adult use of marijuana" — and which motivated the creation of Missourians For A New Approach. The campaign attempted to repeat the success of 2018 by placing a question on the November 2020 ballot, one asking voters to approve a constitutional amendment that would effectively treat cannabis the way the law treats alcohol.

Payne, who served as the 2020 initiative's campaign manager, says the surprising level of public support for adult-use cannabis was borne out in the streets — at least, initially.

Fraud charges have been laid against CannTrust Holdings Inc.’s former chief executive Peter Aceto and two former directors, all of whom face possible jail time of up to five years if found guilty in a sweeping quasi-criminal case led by the Ontario Securities Commission.

Company co-founder and former board chair Eric Paul and former director Mark Litwin are also charged with insider trading following a months-long investigation by Canada’s largest capital markets regulator. The OSC moved in following blockbuster revelations in the summer of 2019 that a Health Canada inspection of the publicly traded company uncovered unlicensed cannabis growing at its Pelham, Ont. facility.

The three men are facing a total of more than a dozen counts that include allegations of making misleading disclosure to investors in a case that will be prosecuted in the Ontario Court of Justice due to its quasi-criminal nature, rather than before an OSC tribunal as a civil matter. This marks the first time the commission has gone after a public company over disclosure using its quasi-criminal powers.

Quasi-criminal offences such as fraud and insider trading carry penalties including jail terms of up to five years less a day and fines of up to $5 million for each conviction.

In a statement Tuesday laying out the charges, the OSC said the allegations “relate to efforts to conceal the illegal growing of cannabis at CannTrust over a 10-month period in 2018 and 2019.”

Proposed legislation will likely prohibit hemp products from containing more than .3% of any kind of THC, including delta-8. This will make the market for such products very small, or non-existent.

For a state that pioneered medical cannabis and was a relatively early adopter of recreational cannabis (cannabis is defined only as marijuana here and not hemp), California is among the worst states in the union when it comes to sensible hemp-derived CBD policy. So it should surprise absolutely nobody that in legislation that’s designed to “legalize” CBD (AB-45 and SB-235), the state is now coming for delta-8 THC.

Before explaining what delta-8’s fate may be, I’ll provide a brief CliffsNotes for how bad California has handled CBD:

Photo by Christina Winter via Unsplash

The second of those links immediately above describes in detail provisions in these bills designed to outlaw any kind of smokable hemp product. I think these bills are long shots. This is in part due to the smokable hemp bans, which are facing huge industry backlash and severely narrow the market for hemp grown in the state, and in part due to general political reasons and opposition from the cannabis industry and elsewhere.

After years of flirting with marijuana legalization, the state of Connecticut is finally ready to make it official.

Today, the state’s governor Ned Lamont signed legislation that legalized recreational pot use for adults aged 21 and older. The new law will officially take effect on July 1. However, retail sales aren’t expected to begin until 2022.

Lamont added his signature to a bill that finally cleared the necessary legislative hurdles last week.

Lawmakers in the state Senate last Thursday approved legislation that would legalize recreational pot use for adults. The vote marked the second time that members of the state Senate passed a legalization measure. Last week, another bill was approved in the chamber before it was amended in the state House and returned to the Senate.

The bill passed the state Senate on Thursday by a vote of 16 to 11, according to local television station NBC Connecticut. The outcome sent the legislation to the desk of Lamont, a Democrat who has made no secret of his support for marijuana legalization.

When you think of liberal cannabis laws, Colorado is probably near the top of the list. However, according to a recent MJBizDaily article, the Colorful State will likely add restrictions to their marijuana industry, pending the signature of Gov. Jared Polis. If passed, House Bill 1317 would:

The actual nomination of a Cannabis Control Board chairperson is the first tangible step towards a functioning cannabis industry in NY.

In all of the excitement over New York’s passage of the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act (MRTA), one of the things that often gets lost is that legalization was just the first step towards the issuance of adult-use cannabis licenses. The single most important administrative action item is the formation of the primary regulatory governing body, the Cannabis Control Board (CCB).

The CCB will be responsible for many of the prerequisites to adult-use licenses being issued. Chief among its responsibilities is the creation of the actual application process for both adult-use cannabis licenses and new registered organizations (ROs) and the industry’s rules and regulations, all of which will be issued within the framework of the MRTA.

Photo by gradyreese/Getty Images

The CCB will consist of five board members: three appointed by the Governor and two appointed by the Senate and Assembly (one each). The CCB’s chairperson will be nominated by the Governor with the advice and consent of the Senate. CCB members will be appointed for a term of three years and must be citizens and residents of New York.

A Black farmer with ties to doing business in Florida will be at the head of the line for a long-awaited batch of medical marijuana licenses in an application process that state health officials will launch soon, senior aides to Gov. Ron DeSantis said.

The aides told The News Service of Florida that the Department of Health will kick off the rule-making process for Black farmer applicants within “weeks to months” and set the stage for another set of licenses that would nearly double the number of medical marijuana operators in the state.

“It would be awesome if we could get that application, get that license. We are definitely overdue as it relates to that,” Ocala nursery operator Howard Gunn, who is Black, said in a phone interview.

State health officials are poised to begin the application process following a highly anticipated Florida Supreme Court ruling last month that upheld a 2017 law carrying out a 2016 constitutional amendment that broadly legalized medical marijuana. The court upheld a requirement in the law that medical marijuana operators handle all aspects of the business, including cultivation, processing and distributing — as opposed to companies being able to focus on individual aspects. Tampa-based Florigrown LLC, which challenged the law, had until June 11 to ask for a rehearing but did not.

Part of the 2017 law requires health officials to grant a license to “one applicant that is a recognized class member” in decades-old litigation, known as the “Pigford” cases, which addressed racial discrimination against Black farmers by federal officials.

State lawmakers in Maine passed a bill last week to decriminalize possession of all drugs. The measure, LD 967, was passed by the Maine House of Representatives on Thursday with a vote of 77 to 62 and was later cleared by the state Senate, according to media reports.

Under the measure, criminal penalties would be dropped for simple possession of scheduled drugs including heroin, cocaine and prescription medications. Instead, those guilty of such offenses would be subject to a fine of $100 or be required to submit to an assessment for treatment of substance use disorder.

Maine’s voters legalized cannabis for adults 21 and older in 2016, and legal recreational sales of marijuana began in the state last year. Possession of other regulated drugs is subject to a range of criminal charges and penalties from misdemeanors for most prescription drugs and felonies for possession of heroin and cocaine.

The bill was introduced by Democratic state Rep. Anne Perry earlier this year. Lawmakers will continue working on the bill to reconcile differences in the legislation, including criminal charges for subsequent possession offenses contained in the Senate’s version of the bill.

“We do need to treat this disorder and law enforcement will be a part of it, but law enforcement is not the gateway to recovery,” Perry said on the House floor last week. “It’s a gateway to isolation and suicide.”

Spain is home to one of the best cannabis communities on earth. Anyone that has visited Spain as a tourist as well as the lucky folks that get to live there will tell you that Spain has some of the best cannabis on the planet. 

That is especially true for hash.

Cannabis clubs are common in Spain, with hundreds of them spread throughout the country. Barcelona is home to roughly 200 cannabis clubs alone. 

Many of the clubs are akin to the famous cannabis cafes seen in Amsterdam, and they are very popular for obvious reasons.

A Big Hole in Spain’s Cannabis Policy

Despite Spain’s flourishing cannabis scene, it is lagging when it comes to medical cannabis policy. 

Texas’s Compassionate Use Program for medical cannabis is set become (just a little) more compassionate, with changes signed into law by the state’s governor this week.

Texas passed the Compassionate-Use Act in 2015, which enabled the first legal use of low-THC cannabis products in the state.  The program has been very restrictive, only allowing for the use of cannabidiol (CBD) preparations containing no more than 0.5% tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). Originally, the Compassionate-Use Program only applied to patients with intractable epilepsy.

But in 2019, HB 3703 came into effect; expanding the program somewhat to include patients diagnosed with seizure disorders, MS spasticity, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, autism, terminal cancer, or an incurable neurodegenerative disease.

On Tuesday, Governor Greg Abbott  signed off on House Bill 1535, expanding the program a little more again. HB 1535, which comes into effect from September, will also allow for patients with PTSD and all types of cancer – not just terminal – to qualify. Additionally, it also raises  THC threshold from 0.5 to one percent.

“Veterans could qualify for medical marijuana under new law. I will sign it.”

HARTFORD, CT (WFSB) - A recreational marijuana bill took a major step toward becoming law, but the governor threatened to veto it over an eleventh-hour amendment.

On Wednesday morning, things didn't look good, and some were saying the marijuana bill was dead.

Gov. Ned Lamont even threatened to veto the bill if it landed on his desk in that form.

However, the House of Representatives took that controversial amendment out.

On Wednesday night, The House passed the bill 76 to 62 with 13 not voting. 

The EMCDDA’s European Drug Report 2021 highlights a significant increase in THC content of cannabis in Europe, as well as prevalent cannabis use amongst Europeans and an increase in home cultivation during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill on Tuesday that expands the state’s medical marijuana program, although cannabis activists say the legislation does not go far enough. The measure, House Bill 1535 (HB 1535), was signed by the Republican governor after lawmakers in the Texas Senate made significant changes to the legislation last month.

Under the bill, patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and all types of cancer will be eligible to use approved medical cannabis products under the Texas Compassionate Use Program. Under current regulations, only intractable epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, ALS, terminal cancer, autism and many seizure disorders are listed as qualifying medical conditions for participation in the program.

HB 1535 also raises the cap on THC in approved medical marijuana formulations to 1 percent by dry weight. Currently, only cannabis medications with a maximum of 0.5 percent THC are permitted under the rules of the program.

An earlier version of the bill that increased the THC limit to 5 percent and also added chronic pain as a qualifying condition was passed by the Texas House of Representatives in April. But when the measure was taken up in the Senate last month, Republican Senator Charles Schwertner introduced a substitute version of the legislation that removed chronic pain as a qualifying condition and rolled back the potency increase to 1 percent.

“As a pharmacist and as a physician, I feel strongly that our limited medical program, with appropriate rules and oversight, is the right path for patients in Texas seeking symptom relief,” Schwertner said when he introduced the changes to the legislation. “I believe the evidence is starting to show that. I believe there needs to be further work, but certainly, the testimony is very strong by patients who are suffering from some of these conditions.”

Hemp has a bright future in Ireland, but government obstacles are reportedly standing in the way.

Sinn Féin is a republican and democratic socialist political party active in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Sinn Féin spokesperson on Agriculture, Matt Carthy TD, says hemp cultivation can help farmers supplement their income in a more environmentally way.

“Uses for hemp include building material for houses, paper, clothes, heating oil and as a plastic alternative,” he said. “There is also an increasing demand for CBD health products, extracted by various approved methods from Hemp, both in Ireland and internationally.”

But rather than actively supporting the sector, Mr. Carthy says the government is doing little.

In Northern Ireland, the Department of Health is responsible for issuing hemp licences. That might seem like an odd state of affairs given hemp’s myriad non-medicinal related uses, but cannabis in all its forms is treated as a controlled substance and subject to restrictive licensing laws.

The bill eliminates the possibility that being arrested for possession of small amounts of cannabis will result in prison time, which cannabis reform advocates typically demand.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards signed off on House Bill 652 to decriminalize small amounts of cannabis possession for personal use.

Possession of up to 14 grams will now be categorized as a misdemeanor rather than a felony. Those caught violating the law face up to a $100 fine without jail time.

Photo by Elsa Olofsson via Unsplash

“It essentially provides for the officer to write a ticket with no jail time,” Shreveport Rep. Alan Seabaugh told the Daily Advertiser about the bill, signed on Tuesday.

June 18th, 1971, President Richard Nixon declared the “war on drugs,” an initiative fueled by fear mongering and racism supposedly started to stop illegal drug use.

For cannabis, the war on drugs disproportionately targeted Black and brown communities, subjecting people to unjust prison sentences for possessing a medicinal substance.

Now, 50 years after this global campaign began, U.S. House Representatives Bonnie Watson Coleman and Cori Bush have revealed a bill to decriminalize drug possession.

For harder drugs, like heroin and opioids, addiction kills thousands of Americans every year, destroying families and ruining lives.

According to data on Dual Diagnosis, 50% of all jail inmates have drug or alcohol addiction, while fewer than 10% receive treatment.