WeedLife News Network

The money was supposed to fund veteran programs but instead Missouri is burning through cash to defend itself in court.

In 2018, Missouri voters approved a ballot measure to legalize medical marijuana in the state. Two years later and licensed sales have yet to occur. Instead, businesses that applied for a license and were rejected have filed more than 800 lawsuits against Missouri. To date, 785 of the cases remain unresolved.

Missouri regulators have spent $1.3 million in court fees defending themselves against the 853 appeals filed. Lisa Cox, the Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) spokeswoman, said these were a one-time fee associated with getting the program off its feet. There were 2,270 facility applications sent to the state, but only 348 licenses were awarded.

“The number of appeals is not an indication of flaws in the process, but rather the high number of applicants,” Cox told The St. Louis Dispatch.

Funds generated from the program support operating and administrative costs. Whatever is left over gets deposited into a newly created Veterans’ Health and Care Fund. Although business application and medical card fees produced $19 million as of December 2019, the Missouri Veterans Commission, which determines how to spend allocations, has yet to receive a penny. However, a state release announced the DHSS had transferred $2.1 million to the Veterans’ Fund over the weekend.

The House Committee on Energy and Commerce approved a bill this week that seeks to improve and accelerate research on medical marijuana in the United States. 

The Medical Marijuana Research Act, introduced by Representative Earl Blumenauer, is a bipartisan piece of legislation that tackles the inefficiency of current cannabis research in the country on several fronts.

First, the bill would streamline the elaborate and lengthy process of obtaining a license to conduct cannabis research. Furthermore, it would help provide cannabis researchers with better quality marijuana, a major sticking point in current research efforts. 

Researchers in the U.S. currently have access only to cannabis grown at the University of Mississippi and run by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), whose crops have been described as “subpar” by scientists. The only existing federally authorized facility for growing research-grade marijuana also appears to be cultivating cannabis that is more akin to hemp.

“With some form of cannabis legal in nearly every state, it’s inexcusable that the federal government is still blocking qualified researchers from advancing the scientific knowledge of cannabis,” Representative Blumenauer said. 

A new U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) interim rule about CBD and hemp manufacturing has sown distress and confusion in the federally legal industry.

Operators say the rule makes it effectively impossible to produce CBD products legally. On his blog, North Carolina cannabis lawyer Rod Kight wrote that the new rule “threatens to destroy” the industry.

The federal government considers cannabis plants and products containing less than 0.3% THC to be hemp, which was legalized in the 2018 Farm Bill. Cannabis containing more than 0.3% THC, however, is an illegal schedule I controlled substance. Hemp businesses have long understood the distinction, and compliant operators strive to grow plants and sell products below the limit.

The rule, which was unveiled August 21 and took effect immediately, says any extract or substance produced during manufacturing or processing which contains more than 0.3% THC is an illegal drug, even if it derives from legal plants and is diluted or refined to legal limits before it reaches consumers. (Read the rule here.) While there are numerous ways to convert hemp plants into CBD products or additives, many if not all involve concentrating the plant matter, resulting in substances that contain more than 0.3% THC.

With the new rule, “It’s almost as if they’re trying to cut the legs out from under the industry,” said Dave DiCosola, CEO of Chicago-based CBD brand Half Day. 

Roughly a mile from the Little Bay de Noc in Michigan’s upper peninsula, tucked in a strip mall off Interstate 2, you’ll find Family Video, the last video rental store in the city of Escanaba. 

Family Video has been a dependable source of entertainment in this post-industrial town for 20 years. Today, the store’s neon green-and-orange marquee reveals the only discernible change to the place in the past two decades: instead of the week’s new movie releases, the letters announce WE SELL CBD NOW! The pivot to cannabis might seem like a major branding miss for a “family” video store in a straight-laced rural area, but Escanaba residents who frequent the store aren’t bothered by the change. They know Michelle Graham manages Family Video, and Michelle can be trusted.

When Michelle started working at Family Video five years ago she was well suited for the job. An extremely personable 35-year-old mother of five, it was easy for her to treat her customers like members of her family, which incidentally was part of her job description. The tedious aspects of the job that would bother most people—patiently nodding through dubious justifications for late rental returns, or listening to a scandalized mother rant about movie ratings—were minor obstacles en route to getting to know and understand her customers more deeply. “I’m like a sponge.” Michelle told me, her brown hair and glasses framing her smile when I spoke with her in July. “I soak up everyone’s stories.”

Today, Michelle’s conversations with customers have higher stakes. Since Family Video started selling CBD in 2019, she has been working with the urgency of an ER physician and the passion of a born-again preacher to deliver the good news about CBD—a cannabis compound that doesn’t contain psychoactive THC—to penny-pinching skeptics and convention-loving “Yoopers”. The vigor of her approach makes it clear why Escanaba’s Family Video is consistently named one of the top ten sellers of CBD products from among the chain’s more than 700 outlets nationwide. The breathless excitement with which Michelle speaks to anyone who will listen about the nuances of CBD, the proper way to use it, the different effects of an oil versus a balm and other details might come across as a sales pitch, unless you know the motivation behind it. For years, Michelle has watched as opioid addiction has devastated her community; in CBD, she sees a potential remedy. For Michelle, Escanaba is a city on fire, and through Family Video she’s found herself in an odd position to fight the blaze.

Twelve years ago Michelle was in a car accident that sent her from the back seat of a car through the front windshield. Since then, she says she’s been “living with the body of an 80-year-old.” She’s had chronic back, nerve, and joint pain, a bone spur, vision loss, carpal tunnel tendonitis, arthritis, and deterioration of tendons and cartilage in her knees and ankles. She had foot surgery for plantar fascitis. She lost her spleen which has left her battling hemorrhoids and severe anemia. And she was only managing three to four hours of sleep a night due to pain.

Led by surging cannabis sales, farm cash receipts in the first half of the year bucked the general decline caused by the coronavirus.

Receipts of $16.7 billion increased 5.2 per cent over 2019, says the Statistics Canada report.

Without a 62 per cent increase — $685 million — in cannabis sales, farm cash receipts would have increased a mere .8 per cent.

Higher crop receipts of $1.3 billion helped offset a $629 million decline in livestock sales. The decrease was caused by market restrictions when COVID-19 broke out.

Lentil receipts tripled to $604 million with better prices and increased exports to India and Turkey.

The Austin Police Department will no longer cite or arrest people for small possessions of cannabis, Police Chief Brian Manley wrote in a July memo. The announcement essentially decriminalized weed possession in the city, but data shows that marijuana arrests were already trending downward statewide.

Cannabis possession arrests declined 30 per cent between 2018 and 2019, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS). Although about 63,000 cannabis arrests were prosecuted by the state in 2018, that figure dropped to 45,000 possession arrests in 2019 and actual prosecutions declined by more than half.

These declines are associated with hemp legalization in Texas. THC-rich cannabis remains illegal in the state, but the similarity between the plants have caused confusion among state police. That’s because Texas law technically defines marijuana as any cannabis plant above 0.3 per cent THC.

That caused the dominoes to fall that lawmakers did not intend. Back in February, Texas crime labs announced they would stop testing suspected cannabis in low-level possession cases. Accordingly, state prosecutors began dismissing possession cases without lab reports that proved THC was present in the cannabis.

Since hemp legalization, cannabis manufacturing arrests also dropped from about 2,700 in 2018 to 1,900 in 2019.

When it comes to global cannabis policy, the United States has set the tone for many decades.

Cannabis was first prohibited in the United States in 1937, and since that time the U.S. has imposed its reefer madness will on the rest of the global community.

Many countries have willingly gone along with the U.S.’s push for continued prohibition, however, it’s a safe assumption that some nations would have preferred to take a more sensible approach, yet refrained from doing so out of fear of backlash from the U.S.

International treaties have kept cannabis prohibition in place in many parts of the world.

Those prohibition policies have ruined countless lives while also preventing the cannabis industry from doing its part to boost local economies, generate tax revenues, and create jobs.

A House of Representatives committee voted on Wednesday to approve a bill that would allow researchers to conduct studies using marijuana produced in compliance with regulations in states with legal cannabis. The vote marks the first time a congressional committee has approved a measure to allow scientists to use marijuana produced from sources other than those authorized by the federal government.

With a voice vote, the House Energy and Commerce Committee approved a substitute version of The Marijuana Research Act of 2019 (H.R. 3797) from Democratic Rep. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon. The bill’s new language streamlines the approval process for those applying to cultivate cannabis with the approval of the federal government. The measure also permits researchers to use marijuana and cannabis products manufactured in accordance with programs legal under state law.

Cannabis From The Feds Is Schwag

Under current federal statute, FDA-approved research must be conducted with cannabis produced at a cultivation facility at the University of Mississippi. However, many researchers have said that the marijuana produced by the facility is difficult to obtain and of low-quality, bearing little resemblance to the cannabis products available from state-legal producers.

“As momentum grows in our effort to end the failed prohibition of cannabis, we also need to address failed drug laws like the ones that make it extremely difficult for researchers and doctors to study cannabis. With some form of cannabis legal in nearly every state, it’s inexcusable that the federal government is still blocking qualified researchers from advancing the scientific knowledge of cannabis,” Blumenauer, the co-chair of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus, said in a press release after Wednesday’s vote. “The bipartisan support of our legislation in today’s committee markup is an important step in removing unnecessary barriers to medical cannabis research and ensuring that patients, clinicians, and consumers can fully understand the benefits and risks of cannabis.”

Activists Applaud Bill

Paul Armentano, the deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), said that the “proposed regulatory change is necessary and long overdue. In fact, NORML submitted comments to the US Federal Register in April explicitly calling for this change.”

ARTICLE BY: HILARY BRICKEN

I’ve been practicing corporate, transactional, and regulatory law in the marijuana industry for going on 10 years now. I’ve never understood exactly why folks get excited about, or even remotely interested, when various lifetime politicians in Congress push bills on the federal legalization/rescheduling of marijuana. Why? Because these bills notoriously go nowhere (for a number of what seem to be purely political reasons) and will continue to go nowhere, in my opinion, where marijuana (while extremely popular with most Americans and obviously with certain entire states) is still too politically hot to trust out-of-touch members of Congress to do anything meaningful about it, and especially now given that the nation’s priorities seem to revolve around dealing with COVID-19 (and rightly so).

The House’s planned floor vote in early September around the most recent federal marijuana legalization measure (the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act (“MORE Act” (see the House version here, which was introduced last year)) is no different. While I’m glad to see members of Congress continue to try to chip away at the continued (failed) War on Drugs regarding cannabis, I’m honestly tired of seeing the fanfare attendant with these legalization bills. At the same time, my interest in these things is usually peaked when looking at what members of Congress are willing to push when it comes to nationwide legalization.

Yes, this upcoming vote is still significant and historic because neither chamber of Congress has ever voted on completely removing marijuana from the federal Controlled Substances Act (and the MORE Act is a bipartisan bill, too), but we all know where this is going–the Democratic-controlled House will likely pass the bill and the GOP-controlled Senate will very likely ignore it or shut it down. I also can’t ignore the fact that the bill’s Senate sponsor is Senator (and democratic vice president nominee) Kamala Harris who admittedly has a terrible record on prosecuting marijuana crimes from when she was the Attorney General of the State of California and is now in the past two and a half years miraculously behind supporting marijuana legalization culminating in a presidential election year. Pretty convenient.

What exactly would the MORE Act do? It completely removes marijuana from the federal Controlled Substances Act, decriminalizing/descheduling it altogether and eliminating criminal penalties for everyone in the commercial chain of production, distribution, and sales (which would also mean that the banking access woes and draconian impact of IRC 280E would be over). Right now, marijuana is a Schedule I controlled substance and illegal under federal law, making its home on schedule I next to LSD and heroin. The Act would also expunge marijuana criminal records dating back to May 1, 1971 because it’s retroactive. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is also charged under the Act with collecting and compiling a variety of data on marijuana businesses and their owners. The Act creates the Opportunity Trust Fund with various earmarks to the Attorney General and the Small Business Administration (SBA) (with the SBA allocations meant to support the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act of 2019). A federal tax would also be imposed on marijuana products “manufactured in or imported into the United States . . . equal to 5 percent of the price for which sold.” Importantly, while the Act empowers the Feds to engage in rulemaking for a federal regulatory framework, states would still be in control of licensing, oversight, and enforcement within their borders (very similar to alcohol).

Indian temples that allow using cannabis during specific celebrations to achieve enlightenment may need to rethink their practices if police in the state of Belagavi make good on their pledge to crack down on such uses.

“We’re now starting to crack down wherever it is available,” Raichur SP Prakash Nityam said of cannabis everywhere in the country. “I’m not aware of temples or mutts particularly, but if we receive information we will raid them,” Nityam said, according to the Times of India.

It seems that some temples are using weed during prasada — wherein a deity receives an offering, partakes of it and then returns it to be distributed and eaten by worshippers — at some temples in north Karnataka.

Devotees gather at the Mouneshwara temple at Tinthini during the annual fair in January, notes the Times of India. They are said to receive a small packet of ganja as prasada, which is smoked after praying, a video posted with the article notes.

A member of the temple committee acknowledged to the Times of India that cannabis is used there and anyone can consume it during the fair, some by ingestion after boiling the plant and others by smoking its powder form.

A Mississippi voter initiative that would legalize marijuana for medicinal purposes is receiving the wrath of Phil Bryant, the state’s former Republican governor who left the statehouse in January after being forced out by term limits. In a self-published op-ed replete with passages in all-caps and paragraphs that rarely exceed two sentences, Bryant urged voters not to approve Initiative 65, which would legalize and create a regulatory system for medical marijuana.

In the op-ed, which was reportedly released on Tuesday but dated November 3, Bryant said that medicinal uses for cannabis do not exist.

“They call it ‘medical marijuana’ and appeal to people’s natural concern for the sick,” he wrote. “Who could be against helping the sick? Well, no one, of course. That’s why it is all BIG MARIJUANA ever talks about, but the U.S. Surgeon General has stated there is no such thing as ‘medical marijuana’ and emphasizes that it’s a ‘dangerous drug.’”

Bryant suggested that the initiative’s prime objective was profit rather than treating people with serious medical conditions.

“If you liked BIG TOBACCO, you are going to love BIG MARIJUANA. It’s the same scheme—just decades later,” Bryant proclaimed. “Sell a product that causes permanent damage to people while claiming it has no ill effects and make as much money as you can for as long as you can. They say it’s about compassion, but follow the money.”

Seniors’ use of cannabis and their support for its legalization is on the upswing.

According to nationwide polling data compiled by the Pew Research Center, nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of “Boomers” (those born in the United States between the years 1946 and 1964) now say that marijuana ought to be legal for adults. That percentage is up significantly from a decade ago, when fewer than one-in-three seniors endorsed its legalization.

Some of this change in attitude is arguably the result of more seniors having firsthand experience with cannabis. According to data published this month in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, “From 2016 to 2018, cannabis use increased for men in all age groups and in most women. … Among those aged 65 to 69 years, cannabis use increased from 4.3 percent to 8.2 percent in men and from 2.1 percent to 3.8 percent in women.”

Why are increasing numbers of seniors turning to — or in some cases, returning to — cannabis? For starters, in many jurisdictions, marijuana’s legal status has changed. Medical cannabis is now legally available in 33 states and throughout Canada — providing many older adults for the first time with safe, above-ground, uninterrupted access to an array of marijuana products. This access is pivotal to older consumers, as the majority of seniors prefer non-herbal, non-smoked cannabis preparations, such as marijuana-infused capsules or edibles — preparations that are rarely available in the illicit marketplace.

Furthermore, seniors are becoming more familiar with and accepting of cannabis’ therapeutic properties. Not only are increasing numbers of seniors becoming aware that cannabis can mitigate many of the health-related symptoms that come with older age, such as chronic pain, but they also understand that it can do so with fewer side-effects than many prescription drugs, like opioids.

France and the EU have been fighting it out in court over import laws concerning a CBD case. If the EU wins it means a forced legalization of CBD across the entire EU… But if France wins, could it be the beginning of the end for CBD?

Before looking into EU CBD laws, we need to shift our attention to the World Health Organization. One of the big cases in the world of legal cannabis has to do with an upcoming vote about cannabis scheduling based on recommendations put out by the WHO (World Health Organization). There are several recommendations that cover a variety of topics on the subject, a few of the main ones being: taking cannabis out of schedule I of the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (substituting it instead with simply THC), and removing THC altogether from the Convention on Psychotropic Substances.

It also recommends looking at individual cannabinoids, like CBD, separately from the rest of the plant, and not scheduling non-psychoactive cannabinoids the same as those that are psychoactive. Along with this it recommends allowing cannabis extracts with up to .2% THC to not be scheduled by either convention. This last one opens the door for easier trade between countries since it would set a legal international benchmark.

The recommendations were supposed to be voted on already, but due to different issues the vote has been put off a couple times, with a current date in December. During this time, member countries are implored to better understand the recommendations and all their implications before the vote.

Now, if the vote goes sideways in December, and the recommendations are rejected, then the old rules regarding cannabis apply. Cannabis is illegal, a schedule I drug according to the Single Convention, and CBD and all other cannabinoids are scheduled the same.

This would erase a lot of the progress that’s been made in the gray area of the last few years, and essentially illegalize CBD. If that happens, what’s going on between France and the EU won’t matter at all. But if those recommendations go through…well there might be some very interesting CBD case laws coming out of the EU thanks to France and its super stringent policies about cannabis.’

As Maine inches closer to finally fulfilling the voters’ desire to bring legalized recreational marijuana to the state, Tuesday represents a significant milestone.

That is when Maine’s Office of Marijuana Policy intends to begin issuing the first active licenses to recreational cannabis businesses.

The office said last month that active licensure is “the culmination of a three-step application process which also includes conditional licensure and local authorization, respectively.” 

Recreational Marijuana’s Journey In Maine

It is perhaps the last major milestone before October 9, when retail sales of recreational marijuana will be permitted—the climax in a nearly four-year long journey to ending prohibition in Maine that has been beset by repeated delays.

The most recent interruption to the rollout of the new law came earlier this year, which the Office of Marijuana Policy said “had been indefinitely postponed in April in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

CDFA’s CalCannabis Cultivation Licensing Division is managing the campaign, which profiles the wide range of licensed California cannabis farmers, from legacy outdoor farms in rural Humboldt to high-tech, vertically-integrated operations in urban locations.

“This is California Cannabis” will feature comprehensive outreach and education efforts, including community events and workshops to highlight the technical assistance and support that is available year-round to licensed growers and new applicants seeking commercial cannabis cultivation licensure. “We’re proud of California’s vibrant cannabis cultivator community,” said Richard Parrott, director of CDFA’s CalCannabis Cultivation Licensing Division. “California is known for growing the best cannabis in the world and our licensed cultivators are leading the way with innovative practices and environmental sustainability.”

California cultivators who are interested in seeking a license can begin the application process online at calcannabis.cdfa.ca.gov or by contacting a licensing specialist by calling toll-free 1-833-CALGROW (1-833-225-4769) or sending an email to calcannabis@cdfa.ca.gov.

CDFA provides year-round support and technical assistance, including updated services for commercial cultivators during the pandemic. For more information about the campaign, please visit growwithCA.com to view the videos, farmer profiles, and other outreach materials.

Pakistan has unveiled plans to allow the industrial production of hemp, spurring hopes farmers and businesses in the conservative Islamic country will be able to tap into the lucrative global cannabis market.

The move comes as Prime Minister Imran Khan's government struggles to boost the country's foreign exchange coffers that have been drained by a struggling economy, fiscal deficits and inflation. 

"This hemp market could provide Pakistan with some $1 billion in the next three years and we are in a process of making a full-fledged plan for this purpose," science and technology minister Fawad Chaudhry told reporters Wednesday.

Hemp is a type of cannabis plant containing cannabidiol (CBD) which advocates say has numerous medicinal and relaxing properties.

It does not contain significant quantities of high-inducing tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).

Regardless of the economic and health crises this year, the marijuana industry continues to be one of the quickest growing industries in United States.

Only a couple months remain until voters in numerous states will see medical and recreational cannabis legalization measures on their ballots. South Dakota will actually have a medical and a recreational legalization measure on its ballot.

Arizona, Montana, New Jersey, and South Dakota have ballot initiatives that could legalize marijuana for adults 21 and older. Mississippi, Nebraska, and South Dakota have ballot initiatives that could establish medical marijuana programs.

These 6 states will be voting on cannabis legalization in November 2020:

The Cannabis for Private Purposes Bill, tabled in parliament on 1 September, provides clarity around the growing and private use of cannabis in South Africa.

While the bill can be seen as the first step in a revised, progressive approach to cannabis in the country, the proposed legislation also throws up a number of red flags, says law firm Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr.

“The focus remains on restricting access to, and the use of, cannabis against the threat of rather severe legal consequences in the form of fines and jail time,” it said.

“What those in the industry were hoping for was a collaborative effort between the various departments such as Health, Agriculture, Finance, and the like.”

Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr said that the drafters of the bill have seemingly adopted a ‘narrow and traditionalist perspective’, which as currently constructed, does not give an inch more than was mandated by the Constitutional Court.