Tag: legalized marijuana

Ohioans Arrested For Marijuana Must Be Involved In Talks About Changing Legalization Law, Not Just ‘Anti-Cannabis’ Republicans, Lawmaker Says

An Ohio Democratic lawmaker wants to see people who’ve been criminalized over marijuana, as well as those with industry experience, involved in any efforts to amend the state’s voter-approved legalization law, arguing that it shouldn’t be left up to “anti-cannabis” legislators alone to revise the statute.

Ohio Senate and House GOP leaders have already previewed plans to pass a package of changes to the law before possession and cultivation becomes legal next month, with a focus on potential revisions affecting tax revenue distribution, public consumption and law enforcement, for example.

But Rep. Juanita Brent (D) says it’s important that people who have been directly impacted by prohibition and who may participate in the legal marketplace have seats at the table as leadership moves ahead with possible amendments.

“If you’ve been criminalized by cannabis, the best thing you can do is come back into the field,” Brent told The Statehouse News Bureau.

“Ohioans have to remember that the people who are trying to be the loudest at the Statehouse are people who were anti-cannabis,” she said. “We cannot have anti-cannabis people leading on what’s going to happen with cannabis. We need people who are involved. We need people who have been doing the work. We need people who have been advocating.”

So far, the conversation around revising the initiated statute has been top-level, with GOP lawmakers and Gov. Mike DeWine (R) speaking generally about areas that they’re interested in changing. But there’s been a consistent emphasis on revising provisions on how marijuana tax revenue will be divvied up, which may be an issue for advocates who want to see the sizable investment in social equity and community reinvestment that’s prescribed under the measure as approved by voters.

Senate President Matt Huffman (R) said last week that he didn’t think most voters considered the nuances of the cannabis reform proposal when they went to the ballot and instead simply passed it based on the broad belief that marijuana should be legal for adults. He argued, for example, that the majority probably doesn’t support prioritizing cannabis business licensing for people who’ve been disproportionately targeted by criminalization.

The governor made similar remarks after this month’s election, as he expressed his interest in quickly changing various components of the law. However, he’s stressed that voters shouldn’t expect any “surprises,” and the proposed revisions that are being discussed would still honor the “spirit” of the reform.

Rather than introduce new standalone legislation through regular order, the Senate president said the plan is to incorporate cannabis amendments into an unrelated House-passed bill and use that as the vehicle, sending the revised measure back to the House for a simple concurrence vote.

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Teens Are Not More Likely To Use Marijuana After Legalization, Study Finds

A study of high school students in Massachusetts found that youth were no more likely to use marijuana after legalization, though more students perceived their parents as cannabis consumers after the policy change.

“No statistically significant differences were found in the prevalence of past-30 day cannabis use before and after legalization among adolescents,” says the report, published in the journal Clinical Therapeutics. The proportion of students who reported perceiving that a parent uses cannabis, however, rose from 18 percent to 24 percent after legalization.

“Adolescent perceptions of their parents as cannabis users increased after legalization,” the study says, “even before state-regulated retails [sic] sales began.”

The findings stem from the results of two waves of survey data collected from two eastern Massachusetts high schools in 2016 and 2018. The earlier survey took place before legalization, while the later one occurred after legalization went into effect but before retail sales began.

In 2016, 82 percent of respondents reported that their perception was that their parents did not use marijuana. By 2018, that number had fallen slightly, to 76 percent.

When it came to their perception of best friends’ cannabis use, students also reported a slight bump. In 2016, 31 percent of students said they perceived their best friend used marijuana, which climbed to 36 percent in 2018.

One main finding of the study was that the likelihood of marijuana use was significantly higher among adolescents who reported perceiving that a parent, sibling or best friend uses the drug.

“The strongest association with past 30-day use was perceived marijuana use among best friends,” the study says, followed by the perception that a sibling uses cannabis both medicinally and recreationally. Adolescents’ perceptions that a parent uses medical and/or adult-use marijuana was also associated with a higher likelihood of past 30-day use.

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Up In Smoke: California’s Largest Pot Distributor Collapses Amid $17 Million In Unpaid Taxes

In mid-May, as rumors of the company’s dire situation swirled, CEO Mike Beaudry insisted “these rumors are categorically not true.”

HERBL completely collapsed less than a month later, following in the footsteps of other California cannabis startups like Flow Kana and MedMen.

The company leaves behind $17 million in unpaid taxes, while several smaller pot companies which have been left in the lurch, SFGate reports.

“Mike [Beaudry, HERBL’s CEO] and his team did a really good job of hiding that fact from their own brands… that’s how they kept getting our products,” said Ali Jamalian, owner of San Francisco cannabis company Sunset Connect, who claims that HERBL owes him $180,000.

Another CEO, Tyler Kearns of Sacramento-based cannabis company Seven Leaves, said HERBL owes his company $880,000. He says he knew the collapsed distributor was in trouble when he found out in June that they were laying off delivery drivers, and that it was going to be near impossible to get that money back.

“I knew this was going to be the biggest failure in U.S. cannabis history,” he told the outlet.

HERBL’s role in the California cannabis ecosystem was crucial, acting as a middleman between pot producers and retailers. Its downfall isn’t just a bad trip for the company; it’s a red flag for the industry, indicating that even the mightiest can fall due to systemic issues.

“I do feel like we’re going to see a significant and material number of closures, up and down the supply chain,” said Wesley Hein, president of the Cannabis Distribution Association, who attributes HERBL’s failure in part to poor business decisions – particularly its continued reliance on traditional distribution models while pot retailers struggled to pay their bills. He says the collapse also exposes systemic issues in the state’s pot industry that will doom other industries – such as overtaxation, competition from unlicensed businesses, and “very excessive and overly burdensome regulations.”

He compared the collapse of HERBL to Lehman.

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New York Governor Signs Marijuana Tax Cut Bills, Providing Local 280E Relief For NYC Businesses

New York’s governor has signed legislation that to provide tax relief to New York City marijuana businesses that are currently blocked from making federal deductions under an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) code known as 280E.

About five months after the Senate and Assembly approved the proposal, and less than a week after both chambers formally transmitted their identical bills to Gov. Kathy Hochul (D), she signed them into law on Friday.

While Hochul signed a separate budget bill last year that included provisions allow state-level cannabis business tax deductions—a partial remedy to the ongoing federal issue—New York City has its own tax laws that weren’t affected by that change. The new measure is meant to fill that policy gap.

“This bill would allow a deduction for business expenses, incurred by taxpayers authorized by the Cannabis Law to engage in the sale, distribution, or production of adult-use cannabis products or medical cannabis, for purposes of the unincorporated business tax (UBT), the general corporation tax (GCT), and the corporate tax of 2015, commonly referred to as the business corporation tax (BCT),” a summary says.

A section of the city’s tax code would be amended to add sections allowing the deductions “in an amount equal to any federal deduction disallowed by section 280E of the internal revenue code.”

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Maryland Republicans Want To Let Police Search Cars And People Based On Smell Of Marijuana, Which Is A Legal Product

Republican lawmakers in Maryland are aiming to undo a law that prevents police from stopping or searching people and vehicles based merely on the smell of marijuana, claiming the measure has put motorists at risk and took away an important tool used by law enforcement to seize people’s firearms.

The effort is one of five legislative proposals that the Maryland General Assembly’s Joint Republican Caucus unveiled this week as part of its public safety agenda for the coming legislative session, which runs from January to April of next year.

“There is no doubt about it, people using cannabis while riding in or operating a vehicle makes our roads less safe,” House Minority Whip Jesse Pippy (R) said at a press conference Tuesday. “The Drug Free Roadways Act of 2024 will remove the prohibition from stopping and searching vehicles due to the odor of cannabis.”

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Biden’s Justice Department Says Marijuana Consumers Are ‘Unlikely’ To Store Guns Properly In Latest Defense Of Federal Ban

The Biden administration has once again found itself in federal court defending a ban preventing people who use marijuana from buying or possessing firearms, arguing that historical precedent “comfortably” supports the restriction and that cannabis consumers with guns pose a unique danger to society, in part because they’re “unlikely” to store their weapon properly before using marijuana.

In a brief submitted to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit on Wednesday, attorneys for the Justice Department responded to a series of prompts from the judges, asserting that the firearm ban for marijuana consumers is justified based on historical analogues to restrictions on the mentally ill and habitually drunk that were imposed during the time of the Second Amendment’s ratification in 1791.

The federal government has repeatedly affirmed that those analogues, which must be demonstrated to maintain firearm restrictions under a recent Supreme Court ruling, provide clear support for limiting gun rights for cannabis users. But several federal courts have separately deemed the marijuana-related ban unconstitutional, leading DOJ to appeal in several ongoing cases.

For the case before the Third Circuit, the government is defending the ban against Erik Matthew Harris, who was convicted of violating the federal statute prohibiting the possession of a firearm by a person “who is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance.” As the Daily Caller first reported, Harris’s legal representation also submitted a supplemental brief to the court on Wednesday that broadly disputes both the substance of the conviction under the statute, as well as the idea that there are relevant historical analogues to uphold the existing ban.

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Top GOP Ohio Lawmaker Says There’s No Need To Rush Changes To Voter-Approved Marijuana Legalization Law, Despite Governor’s Call For Quick Action

A top GOP Ohio lawmaker says there’s no need to rush changes to the state’s voter-approved marijuana legalization law, despite the governor’s insistence on getting revisions enacted before possession and cultivation become legal next month. Meanwhile, another Republican legislator has already come out with a bill to change the law by redirecting millions of dollars in cannabis tax revenue toward supporting law enforcement training.

Just one day after meeting with Gov. Mike DeWine (R) to discuss potential amendments to the statutory cannabis law that voters passed at the ballot last week, House Speaker Jason Stephens (R) said on Tuesday that the areas they’re looking to change don’t come into play for nearly another year, meaning there’s no reason lawmakers need to ram them through before the basic legalization provisions become effective on December 7.

Specifically, the governor, Stephens and Senate President Matt Huffman (R) have been talking about potential revisions focused on mitigating youth consumption, reallocating certain tax revenue and increasing resources to prevent impaired driving.

“To do that in the next couple of weeks, it’s going to be a real challenge to put forth such a large program that quickly,” Stephens said, as The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported.

Another state lawmaker, Rep. Cindy Abrams (R), isn’t wasting any time as she proposes her own changes to the legalization law, however. A bill she introduced last week, shortly after voters approved the marijuana measure, would use $40 million in cannabis tax revenue annually to support a law enforcement training fund. Any revenue in excess of $40 million per year would then be distributed according to the statutory initiative.

“The voters did approve Issue 2, and they had their idea of what the tax money was going to be used for,” Abrams said at a press conference on Tuesday. But she questioned if voters “really even know what they actually voted for.”

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Ohio Governor Says Voters Shouldn’t Expect ‘Surprises’ As He Works With GOP Leadership To Amend Marijuana Legalization Law

The governor of Ohio met with GOP Senate and House leadership on Monday to discuss changes to a voter-approved marijuana legalization initiative that he wants to see implemented before part of the law take effect next month. Meanwhile, a key Democratic lawmaker who has championed cannabis reform says Republicans should have taken the chance to shape policy on the issue months or years ago.

Gov. Mike DeWine (R) said voters shouldn’t expect any “surprises,” and the proposed revisions that are being discussed would still honor the “spirit” of the reform. Potential changes would focus on mitigating youth consumption, reallocating certain tax revenue and increasing resources to prevent impaired driving.

The governor had already previewed the meeting with Senate President Matt Huffman (R) and House Speaker Jason Stephens (R) shortly after last week’s election, which saw voters approve legalization 57-43 percent.

“We have an obligation I believe, to carry that out,” DeWine told reporters following Monday’s discussion.

With respect to possible changes, he said he doesn’t think “there’s any surprises out there,” nor does he think “any of the things that I have suggested that we do really flies in the face of the spirit of what people were voting for.”

“I truly believe that most people went in [to vote] and the issue was, ‘Are we gonna have legal marijuana or we’re not going to have legal marijuana?’ And the details—I’m not sure people got focused on it,” he said. “I have to focus on it because we have to administer it. We have to make sure it actually does, in fact, work.”

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Most Americans Say The U.S. Has ‘Lost Ground’ In War On Drugs, Gallup Poll Shows As Support For Marijuana Legalization Hits Record High

A majority of Americans now say that the U.S. is losing ground in the country’s “illegal drug problem,” according to a new Gallup poll. And at the same time, support for taking a fundamentally different approach to marijuana by enacting legalization has reached a record high.

The survey shows that 52 percent of respondents believe that the U.S. has “lost ground” in the drug war, while 24 percent said that the country has made progress. That’s a major reversal in public opinion compared to the last time Gallup asked Americans about the issue in 2019. At that time, a plurality (41 percent) was optimistic about progress, while 30 percent said the country was losing ground in combating illegal drugs.

That 22-point difference over the course of four years can likely be attributed to growing awareness and concern about the opioid overdose epidemic, which has compounded as fentanyl and other synthetic analogues have proliferated in the drug supply.

Part of the shift could also reflect a growing awareness that the decades-long focus on criminalization at the center of government drug strategies has not worked.

In any case, there are notable partisan divides in attitudes about progress in addressing drug issues, the new poll shows.

“Republicans are extremely negative about U.S. progress on illegal drugs, with 12 percent believing the U.S. is making progress and 75 percent losing ground,” Gallup’s analysis, published on Friday, says. “Independents are also decidedly pessimistic, with 22 percent believing progress is being made and 52 percent thinking the situation is getting worse.”

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Michigan Marijuana Tax Revenue Grew By 49% Over The Past Year, Surpassing Alcohol Earnings

Sales of legal marijuana in Michigan contributed $266.2 million in tax revenue to the government during the most recent fiscal year, according to a new report from the legislature’s nonpartisan House Fiscal Agency. That’s more than the state made from the sale of beer, wine and liquor combined.

Tax from sales of adult-use cannabis were up 49.1 percent in fiscal year 2022–23, which ended in October, compared to $178.6 million collected the year before. That amounted to an additional $87.6 million in state revenue from cannabis sales compared to the prior 12 months.

Of all the major tax revenues itemized in the House Fiscal Agency report published last week, none grew at a faster rate than cannabis revenue.

Adult-use marijuana products are subject to a 10 percent state excise tax, which accounts for the $266.2 million. Products also incur the state’s standard 6 percent sales tax, which works out to an additional $159.7 million in revenue from legal marijuana transactions.

Looking at the cannabis excise tax alone, marijuana was responsible for nearly 0.8 percent of total state revenue recorded in the annual report. Including sales tax, the share works out to about 1.3 percent of total revenue.

The marijuana excise tax brought in more money for the state last fiscal year than alcohol taxes, which contributed about $192.6 million total—$46.6 million from beer and wine and $146 million from liquor That’s a shift from fiscal 2021–22, when combined alcohol taxes brought in roughly $12.9 million more revenue than cannabis.

By contrast, marijuana revenue amounted to less than half of the $722.2 million Michigan made from tobacco taxes in the most recent fiscal year.

In October 2023 alone, the marijuana excise tax produced $52.4 million in tax revenue—more than any other single source aside from sales and use taxes, income taxes, insurance taxes and tobacco taxes.

Michigan voters approved adult-use marijuana legalization in 2018, with legal sales beginning the next year.

The state has set sales records even as the average cost of marijuana has remained at record lows, with the price of an ounce for adult-use cannabis now hovering around $98 just a few months ago. In December 2021, by contrast, the cost of an ounce was about $180.

Last month, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) signed a pair of bills into law to allow state-licensed marijuana businesses to conduct trade with tribal cannabis entities. Both took effect immediately.

“The bills are intended to allow for the sale of product between the two types of businesses while maintaining a level playing field by requiring tribal businesses to pay the same tax rate as other businesses,” according to an analysis prepared by House staff.

Michigan is one of several states where cannabis tax has earned more revenue than taxes on alcohol.

During the most recent fiscal year in Illinois, for example, legal cannabis brought in $451.9 million—about $135.6 million more than alcohol.

Colorado last year state generated more income from marijuana than alcohol or cigarettes—and nearly as much as alcohol and tobacco combined.

Similar milestones have been seen in Arizona and Washington State.

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