Tag: legalized marijuana

Missouri NAACP Threatens Lawsuit To Stop Marijuana Social Equity Arrangements That ‘Defraud’ The State

James Harnden has been a longtime activist for cannabis legalization, ever since he got slapped with a low-level felony possession charge for having an ounce of weed.

The 56-year-old Rockford, Illinois, resident says that charge has cost him job opportunities for 30 years.

Earlier this year, he saw an advertisement in the Craigslist “gigs” section posted by a Michigan cannabis real estate group called Canna Zoned MLS. It was looking for “partners who qualify as a social equity applicant” to participate in Illinois’s lottery to award cannabis business licenses that are, in part, meant to benefit people impacted by marijuana criminalization.

“I spent most of my life applying for jobs and not getting them,” Harnden said. “So I’m like, ‘Okay, so maybe one of these licenses will swing my way.’”

The Craigslist ad read: “If you are eligible and provide the required documentation, we will give you $2,000, just for helping us submit the lottery application! If we win the lottery and secure a license, we will give you an additional $20,000!”

Harnden says what he didn’t realize was that he signed a contract agreeing to hold 100 percent ownership interest on the application, but that he wouldn’t get revenue or profits from the business. After the business passed through all the state and municipal approvals, the contract stated that Harnden would be required to sell his share of the business for $1 to the group or be held in breach of contract.

The contract also authorized the group to enter Harnden’s information into lotteries for social equity cannabis licenses in other states—and that’s how Harden says he got paid $500 to be part of the lottery for Missouri’s microbusiness license program.

Harnden was eligible to apply in Missouri because of his marijuana charge, which is among seven eligibility categories that also includes living in census tracts with high poverty and unemployment rates. Canna Zoned’s Jeffrey Yatooma is listed as the “authorized agent” on the contract Harnden provided to The Independent, leaving a space for his signature at the bottom.

Yatooma secured two of the 16 social equity cannabis licenses—in Columbia and Arnold—issued earlier this month, according to information obtained by The Independent through a public records request. Those records show Yatooma is listed as the “designated contact” for 104 out of the 1,048 applications for dispensary licenses in Missouri’s lottery.

Yatooma’s group was not the only one using the strategy of flooding Missouri’s lottery with applications to obtain a dispensary license. An Arizona-based consulting firm is connected to more than 400 dispensary applicants, including six winners, and a Missouri firm is connected to more than 80 applicants and two winners. Both said their clients did not advertise or promise payment for submitting applications.

In at least three states holding lotteries for social equity cannabis licenses this year—Illinois, Maryland and Missouri—Yatooma’s group has offered to pay eligible people up to $2,000 to apply on their behalf and $20,000 more if they won.

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Colorado Marijuana Retailers Have 99% Compliance Rate In Underage Sales Checks, State Regulators Say

Colorado marijuana regulators announced this week that out of 285 underage sales checks conducted at state-licensed cannabis stores this year, there have been only four failures—a compliance rate of about 99 percent.

“While any failure is unacceptable,” the Colorado Department of Revenue’s Marijuana Enforcement Division (MED) said in the latest issue of its quarterly In the Weeds newsletter on Monday, “we’re pleased to report this very high compliance rate which is on par with the compliance percentage from 2022.”

Records from the state’s underage sales dashboard show an underage sales check compliance rate of 99 percent in 2022, which was a record high. Compliance rates were 95 percent in 2021, 97 percent in 2020 and 2019, 92 percent in 2018, 95 percent in 2017 and 94 percent in 2016.

“MED’s priority is protecting public health and safety, and nothing is more important than preventing youth access to regulated marijuana,” the agency said in the email. “While the data continually shows us that minors are overwhelmingly not getting marijuana from regulated stores, underage sales checks of licensed stores are a vital tool to keep it that way.”

Records of individual sales checks are listed on the MED dashboard, but none from 2023 are currently included. A Department of Revenue representative told Marijuana Moment that’s because “entries only appear in the dashboard once the administrative action has reached a final disposition,” which can take anywhere from a few months to more than a year after the initial violation.

Colorado requires that people show ID before they enter a Colorado cannabis shop and before making a purchase. MED has said retailers should also be aware of actions they must take if they suspect an employee is violating the rules or if a person presents fraudulent identification.

Colorado also has a training and certification program from dispensaries to receive a “Responsible Vendor” designation, which is meant to encourage compliance and also promote consumer transparency.

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If Ohio Voters Pass Marijuana Legalization Measure, Senate President Says He’ll Push For ‘Reviewing It And Repealing Things’

As early voting in Ohio kicked off this week, Republican state senators passed a resolution urging residents to reject an adult-use marijuana legalization initiative on the November ballot. But if the cannabis reform measure passes, Senate President Matt Huffman (R) also warned that GOP lawmakers may seek to scuttle some of its core components.

If Ohio voters approve Issue 2, he said during a speech on the Senate floor this week, “this initiated statute is coming right back before this body.”

“We’re going to have a mental health crisis on our hands,” if legalization becomes law, Huffman cautioned. “We are going to pay for this for years and years and years, and it’s only going to get worse.”

Huffman later clarified to local reporters that he wouldn’t seek to repeal the legalization plan entirely if it’s approved by voters, saying that he would instead “advocate for reviewing it and repealing things or changing things that are in it.”

He specified that he’s concerned about some of the measure’s provisions, including one that would funnel put a portion of state tax revenue from legal marijuana toward financial assistance and technical support for people who apply for cannabis business licenses under the initiative’s social equity program.

In his speech to colleagues, however, the Senate president took aim squarely at legalization.

“If Issue 2 passes, there will be more teenagers in the state of Ohio committing suicide,” he warned. “And our reaction to that will not be, ‘Let’s make marijuana illegal,’ because by that time, more people will be making lots of money. It will be, ‘Maybe we should hire drug counselors, get into the schools, talk about kids not taking drugs.’ But by then it will be too late. It’ll be even more part of our culture. And no, I’m not a scientist, but I’m a person who can look at facts and listen to scientists and know that that’s true.”

“If it’s in your home, if people can purchase it for you, if adults can purchase it for you,” he added, “children are going to have this more often.”

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New Interactive Federal Map Shows How States Rely On Marijuana Tax Revenue To Fund Public Services

A new map published by the U.S. Census Bureau details the proportion of state revenue made up by marijuana tax money, and in some cases, the figures are eye-popping.

In Oregon, for example, roughly $1 in every $20 the state made during some recent time periods came from legal cannabis transactions. According to the federal data, marijuana taxes comprised 4.67 percent of Oregon’s total revenue in the first quarter of fiscal year 2023, 4.7 percent in the first quarter of 2022 and 5.21 percent in the third quarter of 2021.

While Oregon by far relied heaviest on marijuana tax dollars, other states—including Michigan, Illinois, Alaska and Colorado—consistently saw marijuana revenue make up at least 1 percent of state income over the past two years.

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Lone Democrat Who Opposed Marijuana Banking Bill In Senate Committee Explains His Vote

U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) was the sole Democrat to vote against a marijuana banking reform bill during a committee markup last month. In a new interview, the senator described his vote as an effort at making important equity improvements while there’s still a chance to do so.

“I’m worried that if we pass a bill with all of the fees and the revenue that comes, and not begin to address the issue of restorative justice, we’re not going to go back and get those communities,” Warnock said during an appearance on Crooked Media’s Lovett or Leave It podcast that was posted on Sunday. Black and brown people especially, he said, have been “hollowed out by half a century of the so-called war on drugs for using marijuana.”

Warnock was discussing the Secure and Fair Enforcement Regulation (SAFER) Banking Act, which would protect banks that service state-legal marijuana markets from being punished by federal regulators.

“What it does is it allows businesses and banks to participate with cannabis businesses in states where it’s legal,” Warnock explained, “and so it creates a safe space for them. But the communities that have been most devastated by the so-called war on drugs, [it] doesn’t do a thing for them at all.”

“My question was, ‘Who are we really making safer?’”

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Weed Is Legal in Illinois. Police Searched His Car Anyway.

In June 2022, police in Illinois pulled over Prentiss Jackson for driving without his lights on. An officer with the Urbana Police Department subsequently claimed he could smell “a little bit of weed” coming from the car, leveraging that to search Jackson’s vehicle and ultimately kicking off a legal odyssey that would result in an 84-month sentence in federal prison.

At the officer’s request, Jackson handed over two grams of unburnt cannabis he kept in a baggie in his glove box. Possessing up to 30 grams is permissible under Illinois law. 

But when the officer demanded Jackson exit the vehicle, he ran—dropping a gun in the process. Prentiss was charged with possessing a firearm as a felon. Although Jackson sought to suppress the evidence from that search—invoking Illinois’ legal cannabis threshold and alleging that the officer lacked probable cause—Judge James E. Shadid of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois came down in favor of police, ruling that Jackson had run afoul of the state requirement to keep marijuana in an odor-proof container.

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Give Small Business a Fighting Chance Against Mega Marijuana

The SAFE(R) Banking Act vote and the Biden administration’s review of the federal status of marijuana have garnered headlines and applause from many drug reform advocates and cannabis industry leaders. But without congressional action to protect small businesses, federal marijuana reform threatens to give an unfair advantage to a handful of national corporations while hobbling thousands of local farmers and neighborhood shopkeepers.

Under current law, state-licensed marijuana companies are denied the use of basic financial services. That means no checking accounts, no tax credits, no small business loans. For the cannabis industry’s emerging billion-dollar corporations, that’s not a problem. They’re able to expand and gobble up smaller companies (and their licenses) using private equity money and funding rounds in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Small businesses can’t compete on that scale. Unless Congress acts, the Biden administration’s plan to merely reschedule marijuana is likely to supercharge the rise of national cannabis conglomerates while strangling local community-scale businesses.

This should be a bipartisan win-win. Support for small business and marijuana legalization are two rare issues where Republican and Democratic voters find common ground. A recent Gallup poll found Republican support for legalization now tops 51 percent, while 81 percent of Democrats want to end pot prohibition. Both parties compete to be seen as the one true BFF of Main Street mom-and-pops.

And yet party leaders on both sides are poised to embrace a lose-lose. In a study recently published by Ohio State University’s Drug Enforcement and Policy Center, we found that America’s $26 billion legal cannabis industry is quickly consolidating into the hands of a few well-financed national players. In 2018, the seven largest multistate cannabis companies accounted for only 3 percent of the legal industry’s annual revenue. By the end of 2022, that share had grown to nearly 18 percent.

If the trend continues, the cannabis industry might soon resemble America’s beer industry: a market dominated by a handful of global corporations with small businesses competing for an ever-shrinking slice of the pie.

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The cannabis industry’s arch nemesis reemerged this week

Cannabis investors have been waiting for movement on the SAFE Banking Act, which would free up large banking institutions to provide industry players with much-needed loans and other banking services, for years. 

Next week was supposed to be a big milestone in the political process as September 27 was seen as a strong tentative date for a Senate vote on the bill. 

The SAFE Banking Act could save the fledgling U.S. cannabis industry from being crushed by the hard ceiling of lack of banking access as it grows larger. 

In the past, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has pushed to include the SAFE Banking Act into a larger funding packages in order to get it passed, to no avail. 

And while the bill has garnered bipartisan support — especially in the House of Representatives — Senate Republicans seem hellbent on slowing up the industry’s progress. 

Senators Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) and Steve Daines (R-Mont.) have filed new legislation that would prevent federal agencies from rescheduling cannabis without congressional approval. 

The Deferring Executive Authority Act was introduced on Thursday by Lummis and Daines, who opposed marijuana being legalized in her own state. 

“Congress makes the laws in this country, not D.C. bureaucrats,” said Lummis. “The American people through their elected representatives in the Senate and House should have the final say on such a momentous change as the legalization of marijuana.

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House Democrats File Marijuana Legalization And Expungements Bill

A top House Democrat has reintroduced a bill to federally legalize, tax and regulate marijuana, with provisions to expunge prior cannabis convictions.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, refiled the Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act on Wednesday. There are 33 initial cosponsors—all Democrats.

The comprehensive legalization legislation has passed the House twice in recent sessions—but this marks the first time it’s being introduced with Republicans in control of the chamber, raising serious questions about whether it will move. The Judiciary Committee, which is the primary panel of jurisdiction, is chaired by anti-cannabis Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH).

Even the prospects of a modest marijuana banking bill that’s set for committee action in the Senate next week are uncertain in the House under the GOP majority. That said, a GOP-led House panel did advance legislation on Wednesday to prevent the denial of federal employment or security clearances based on a candidate’s past cannabis use.

In any case, advocates have long touted the MORE Act as an example of the type of wide-ranging cannabis reform legislation that would not only end prohibition but take steps to right the wrongs of prohibition and promote social equity.

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Canadian Study Links Cannabis Legalization to an Increase in Car Accidents

The results of a recent study published in JAMA Network Open claim to have found an association between cannabis legalization and an increase in traffic accidents.

The study was conducted by researchers at the University of Ottawa and looked at emergency room visits in Ontario, Canada over a 13-year period (Jan 2010-Dec 2021 which is actually 12 years but they say 13 in the study so what do I know), at the end of which they denoted a 475.3% increase in traffic accidents that resulted in an emergency room visit in which the driver had cannabis in their system at the time of the accident.

“This cross-sectional study found large increases in cannabis involvement in ED visits for traffic injury over time, which may have accelerated following nonmedical cannabis commercialization,” the conclusion of the study said. “Although the frequency of visits was rare, they may reflect broader changes in cannabis-impaired driving. Greater prevention efforts, including targeted education and policy measures, in regions with legal cannabis are indicated.”

At first glance, 475.3% sounds like a big number and suffice it to say many of the anti-cannabis media outlets who repackaged that number for a scary-sounding headline are counting on their readership to look no further and take their word for it that cannabis legalization and car crashes must be associated. I’m a journalist, not a scientist, but I am able to point out some facts about the study that might make that big number seem a bit less scary.

For one thing the study was only conducted in Ontario, Canada. In terms of sample size, that is one city in a country with very specific cannabis laws so to lay the blanket term “legalization” over one very specific set of laws isn’t totally accurate. The study even says so in the introduction:

“Another study also found no increase in total traffic injury hospitalizations in Canada over 2.5 years following legalization. Critically, the slow rollout of the cannabis retail market in Canada and the overlap of the legalization period with the COVID-19 pandemic greatly reduces the ability of these studies to evaluate the impacts of legalization,” the study said.

It’s also important to understand that the total number of injury-causing traffic accidents involving cannabis in the 13-year period came to a grand total of 426 out of 947,604. That number as a percentage is .04%, which is even smaller when compared to the total number of traffic accidents without taking emergency room visits into account. It’s hardly insignificant, but it is, arguably, a much less daunting number at first glance than 475.3%.

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