Tag: cannabis

44,000 marijuana convictions in Connecticut to be cleared in 2023

Starting on January 1, 2023, the state says records of approximately 44,000 residents will have cases cleared, including some that date back more than 30 years ago.

Two very different reasons were provided by Governor Ned Lamont as to why the convictions will be erased, the first and most obvious being that the state legalized recreational marijuana in July 2021, allowing adults over 21 to carry 1.5 ounces on their person or five ounces in a locked container or locked glove compartment or trunk.

“On January 1, thousands of people in Connecticut will have low-level cannabis convictions automatically erased due to the cannabis legalization bill we enacted last year,” the governor commented.

The other reason, according to Gov. Lamont, is the state’s job market, which seeks to fill “hundreds of thousands” of open positions.

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Illegal Cannabis Growers Still Thrive in California, Stealing Legal Business

The legalization of recreational cannabis in the state of California has reportedly neither led to a downturn in illegal business nor has it relieved stress on law enforcement.

As it turns out, illegal cannabis growers have only thrived since California legalized the recreational use of the drug in 2016, stealing business from legal sellers at half the price due to the lack of regulation or taxation.

“The illegal industry is competing with the legal industry and essentially putting them out of business,” Sgt. James Roy of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department told Fox News.

Roy, who heads the department’s cannabis eradication team, had recently raided an illegal farm in Riverside County that had four massive white tents, colloquially known as “hoop houses,” containing $1.5 million in illegal cannabis.

“This place is no different than thousands of others we hit this year confiscating about a half-million plants in Riverside County alone,” Roy told the outlet.

“It’s definitely profitable for the illegal market,” Roy later said. “They’re selling greenhouse marijuana by the pound of anywhere from $500 to $2,000 here on the West Coast. But if they take that same exact product and ship that back east, it’s going for two and three times that amount.”

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Oregon Gov. Kate Brown Pardons Everyone Convicted Of Simple Marijuana Possession

Democratic Oregon Gov. Kate Brown issued a pardon Monday for those in her state who have been charged with simple possession of marijuana.

“No one deserves to be forever saddled with the impacts of a conviction for simple possession of marijuana — a crime that is no longer on the books in Oregon,” Brown announced in a press release. “Oregonians should never face housing insecurity, employment barriers, and educational obstacles as a result of doing something that is now completely legal, and has been for years. My pardon will remove these hardships.” The move will eliminate over 47,000 convictions from criminal records impacting about 45,000 people.

Calling the criminal justice system in Oregon “flawed, inequitable, and outdated,” Brown further added that “Black and Latina/o/x people have been arrested, prosecuted, and convicted at disproportionate rates.”

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New York cannabis farms have nowhere to sell a combined 300,000 pounds of weed, valued at $750 million, as delays continue for dispensaries in the state

Hundreds of thousands of pounds of marijuana are currently sitting idly on New York cannabis farms without a single legal recreational dispensary in the state open and ready to sell the product.

An estimated 300,000 pounds of weed are becoming a growing concern for farmers who planted the crop in spring 2021 in hopes of cashing in on the drug’s legalization in New York state. The lot is valued at about $750 million based on the average wholesale value of $2,500 per pound, according to Bloomberg.

Today, the legal recreational cannabis market is stalled as applicants for the first 150 individual retail licenses and 25 nonprofit licenses are still waiting to hear back from the Office of Cannabis Management, per Bloomberg.

Although players in the industry are waiting for the green light from the state, Melany Dobson — CEO of New York-based Hudson Cannabis — told Bloomberg it’s not the only thing holding her and others back.

“It’s an unclear path to market,” Dobson said. “We’ve been told again and again that dispensaries will open before the end of the year. I’ve acted as though that’s our single source of proof, so we’re prepared for that.”

The clock is ticking for the freshly harvested pounds of pot as farmers work to extend its shelf life in preparation for the still-to-come legal dispensaries.

“Old cannabis starts to have a brownish glow,” Dobson said. 

She continued: “We’re trying to retain as much quality as possible. And rushing it into the finished product bags is not the way to do that.”

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Cannabis found in ancient Israeli temple called ‘revolutionary’ discovery

Holy smokes!

Archaeologists have discovered cannabis residue on artifacts in a temple in southern Israel, marking the first known use of hallucinogenic drugs in the Jewish religion, reports the Associated Press.

The study, which was published Friday in the Tel Aviv: Journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University, notes that the “revolutionary” findings from an eighth-century BC shrine at Tel Arad suggest “the use of mind-altering substances as part of cultic rituals in Judah.”

“Here, the official state religion of the kingdom of Judah was using this substance,” study author Eran Arie said of the psychotropic samples, which were found on two limestone altars. The synagogue was first unearthed in the 1960s at the Tel Arad excavation site near Jerusalem, however, archaeologists hadn’t identified the ancient marijuana until now.

Chemical analysis also revealed that the hashish was likely burned atop dried animal droppings.

However, it’s unlikely that the ancient Hebrews were smoking pot to get stoned. Yossi Garfinkel, an archaeology professor from Hebrew University, postulated that they took various mind-altering substances, including opium and wine “to get into ecstasy and connect with God.”

The marijuana milestone marks the “first time we see psychoactive substances in Judahite religion,” according to Arie, who hopes the discovery will shed more light on how ancient Israelites conducted worship.

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Washington Has Been Much More Successful Than California in Displacing the Black Market for Pot

A new report indicates that Washington, which legalized recreational marijuana in 2012, has been much more successful at displacing the black market than California, where voters approved legalization in 2016. In a 2021 survey by the International Cannabis Policy Study (ICPS), 77 percent of Washington cannabis consumers reported buying “any type of marijuana” from a “store, co-operative, or dispensary” in the previous year, while 17 percent said they had obtained pot from a “dealer.”

The share of Washington consumers who report buying marijuana from a “store, co-operative, or dispensary” is higher than the average for states that have legalized recreational use, which was 57 percent in 2021, according to a nationwide ICPS survey. Washington’s Liquor and Cannabis Board (LCB) paid for the ICPS report on cannabis consumption in that state, and the ICPS has not published California-specific survey data. But calculations based on estimated total consumption and legal sales suggest that the black market accounts for somewhere between two-thirds and three-quarters of marijuana purchased in California.

California’s striking failure to shift consumers from illegal to legal dealers is largely due to a combination of high taxes, onerous regulations, and local retailing bans. While Washington has a relatively high retail marijuana tax (37 percent, plus standard sales taxes), in other respects the state has made it easier for licensed suppliers to compete with illegal sources.

A 2022 study from Reason Foundation (which publishes Reason) notes that local restrictions in California have created “massive cannabis deserts” where “consumers have no access to a legal retailer within a reasonable distance of their home.” Washington has more than three times as many legal dispensaries per capita as California.

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Biden’s Marijuana Pardons Did Not Free a Single Federal Prisoner or Deliver the Expungement He Promised

Edwin Rubis has served more than two decades of a 40-year federal prison sentence for participating in a marijuana distribution operation. Taking into account “good time” credit, he is not scheduled to be released until August 2032.

Rubis is one of about 3,000 federal prisoners whose cannabis-related sentences were unaffected by President Joe Biden’s mass pardon for low-level marijuana offenders. A protest at the White House today called attention to their predicament.

Biden’s October 6 proclamation applied only to U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents convicted of simple marijuana possession under the Controlled Substances Act or the District of Columbia Code, none of whom was still incarcerated. Although his pardons could benefit as many as 10,000 or so individuals, that represents a tiny percentage of all simple possession cases, which typically are charged under state law. And Biden’s action will not release a single federal prisoner.

According to a 2021 report from Recidiviz, “more than 3,000 individuals are
currently serving marijuana-related sentences in federal prison.” The report estimated that ending federal marijuana prohibition—a step that Biden has steadfastly resisted—would reduce the federal prison population by more than 2,800 over five years.

“Your recent executive order, while a great first step, did nothing to address the thousands of federal cannabis prisoners currently incarcerated in federal prison,” 16 drug policy reform groups noted in an October 10 letter to Biden. “While your recent executive order will help many, it will not release a single one of the nearly 2,800 federal cannabis prisoners.” Although “eighteen states and the District of Columbia have legalized cannabis,” the letter said, “there are thousands of Americans who are serving long-term prison sentences, including some life sentences, in federal facilities for conduct involving amounts of cannabis that are far less than what dispensaries routinely handle on a daily basis.”

The moral logic of Biden’s distinction between simple possession and other marijuana offenses is puzzling. He says marijuana use should not be treated as a crime. Yet he is willing to let individuals like Rubis languish in prison merely for helping people use marijuana, which today is recognized as a legitimate business in most states, 19 of which allow recreational as well as medical use.

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Federal Bureaucrats Say We Can’t Reschedule Marijuana Because of How It’s Scheduled

Last week, President Joe Biden announced that he would pardon all Americans federally convicted of simple possession of marijuana. The announcement was a welcome, though limited, shift in the U.S. government’s seemingly unending war on drugs. Biden additionally called on governors to follow suit in their respective states and grant clemency to the vast majority of offenders convicted under state laws. He also encouraged Attorney General Merrick Garland and Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Xavier Becerra to review marijuana’s classification under federal law.

But that shift may be easier said than done thanks to the age-old problem of federal bureaucracy.

Currently, marijuana is classified as a Schedule I substance, indicating “a high potential for abuse, no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, and a lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision.” In his announcement last week, the president noted that this puts it in the same category as heroin and a more restrictive category than fentanyl.

In 2015, the last time the government assessed marijuana’s classification, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and HHS recommended keeping it at Schedule I. The assessment included, among other factors, “the scientific literature on whether marijuana has a currently accepted medical use”—a tall order since Schedule I status makes it much more difficult to study in the first place.

The Washington Post reported today that “such an evaluation—the first initiated by a U.S. president—is made all the more difficult due to tight restrictions on research into marijuana.” Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a research institute within the National Institutes of Health, told the paper, “It’s something that we constantly communicate: We really need to figure out a way of doing research with these substances.”

In other words, as Scott Lincicome of the Cato Institute tweeted, the government “can’t research whether marijuana should remain a ‘Schedule I’ substance bc of govt restrictions on… researching Schedule I substances.”

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