Tag: marijuana legalization

Minnesota Governor Dismisses Claims That State Constitution Lets People Sell Homegrown Marijuana Without A License Following Legalization

The governor of Minnesota is pushing back against a legal argument that the state Constitution allows people to sell their homegrown marijuana without obtaining a license, stating that it was “not our intention” to authorize that type of commerce under the legalization legislation he signed into law this year.

While adults 21 and older may now possess, cultivate and gift cannabis under the law that took effect at the beginning of the month, retailers (beside those operated by tribes) are not expected to open for at least another year. As the law was being drafted, however, some advocates said that Section 7, Article XIII of the Minnesota Constitution gave farmers another option to begin marijuana sales outside of the licensing scheme.

That section, enacted in 1906 after a farmer was penalized for selling melons out of his wagon, states that “any person may sell or peddle the products of the farm or garden occupied and cultivated by him without obtaining a license.”

It doesn’t specify what kinds of products may be sold—and now that cannabis is legal, certain advocates are making the case that the policy is applicable to homegrown marijuana. Others want lawmakers to revise the new legalization law so that it explicitly protects the rights of farmers to sell their own cannabis without a license.

Gov. Tim Walz (D), a strong proponent of the state’s legalization law, said during a press conference last week that he and lawmakers didn’t intend to create that alternative commerce pathway, though he didn’t necessarily speak to the merits of the constitutional argument. He said he hasn’t had any “substance conversations” with legislative experts or commerce officials about the possibility.

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Missouri Marijuana Businesses Could Lose Licenses Over Violations At Events They Organize Under New Rules

As Missouri went to celebrate the first 4/20 after the state legalized recreational marijuana, a licensed cannabis business in Kansas City organized a huge festival.

For the first time, people were able to smoke pot openly at a large public event in Missouri, with approval under local government rules.

“It was the first of its kind,” said Amy Moore, director of the state’s cannabis regulation, during a legislative committee hearing in May.

Organizers did an “excellent job” of trying to adhere to state regulations, Moore said, but other events haven’t gone as well. Regulators at the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services have had trouble holding medical-marijuana businesses accountable for things that went against their rules.

“If a licensee chooses to organize or offer an event to the public, they should be responsible for what happens,” Moore said of businesses that landed state licenses to grow or sell marijuana.

So when the new cannabis regulations go into effect on Sunday, officials will have that power to hit marijuana facilities with fines, suspend their operations or even revoke their licenses if they host events where unlawful activity occurs.

“There would be a call to make on whether whatever happened…was really due to the way they organize their event and the format that they provided for the behavior at issue,” she told legislators in May.

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Republican Senators Admit Marijuana Legalization Disrupts Cartels As They Urge FDA To Reconsider Menthol Cigarette Ban

A group of four Republican senators who do not support marijuana legalization has admitted that the policy change disrupts illegal sales by cartels. The acknowledgement comes in a letter urging the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to reconsider plans to ban menthol cigarettes and set nicotine content limits, arguing that the prohibition and strict regulations could benefit illicit trafficking operations.

Writing to FDA Commissioner Robert Califf on Monday, Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Ted Budd (R-NC) and Bill Hagerty (R-TN) unwittingly made the case for the legalization and regulation of controlled substances.

The main point of the letter is to express concern FDA’s proposed menthol cigarette ban, which the senators said could “empower” transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) to “exploit black market opportunities that such policies could create.”

The senators aren’t in favor of cannabis legalization, but they did also—apparently inadvertently—make the case for that reform.

“While the primary threat from Mexican TCOs come from trafficking in illicit drugs, these organizations have diversified their activities in response to changing conditions,” they said. “As it has become easier to sell marijuana products in the U.S., Mexican TCOs have prioritized trafficking fentanyl and other synthetic drugs that are cheaper to manufacture, easier to transport, and generate more profit.”

In other words, the GOP senators are acknowledging that as Americans in more states have the opportunity to buy legal cannabis from licensed retailers, the market share for unregulated marijuana trafficked by cartels is shrinking—and as a result they are having to scramble to sell other substances to make up their losses.

That’s also the conclusion of a federal law enforcement agencies, as well as the Congressional Research Service (CRS), which released a report on the trafficking trend last year.

The head of the labor union that represents U.S. Border Patrol agents also acknowledged in 2020 that states that legalize marijuana are disrupting cartel activity.

In light of what’s been observed with marijuana, the senators are cautioning against opening up a new illicit market for menthol cigarettes by enacting a federal ban, tacitly acknowledging the failures and consequences of prohibition.

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Florida Supreme Court Gives Attorney General More Time To Argue Why Marijuana Legalization Should Be Blocked From 2024 Ballot

The Florida Supreme Court on Monday granted the state attorney general’s request for more time to file a brief arguing why voters should not get a chance to decide on a marijuana legalization initiative on the 2024 ballot.

On the same day that Attorney General Ashely Moody (R)—whose office is seeking to invalidate the cannabis measure—filed a motion seeking the one-week extension, the court agreed to the delay.

The attorney general—as well as the Florida Chamber of Commerce and the Drug Free America Foundation—told the court that they had “numerous other responsibilities during the relevant period.” The official also previously requested a two-week deadline extension for initial briefs that the court granted.

Moody’s latest request noted that her office is tied up with fundamental administrative tasks, as well as filing briefs in two other unrelated court cases. Also, it pointed out that the court allowed ACLU of Florida to file its own brief two days after the last response deadline for supporters of the legalization measure.

“As a result, the current deadline gives the opponents just three business days to respond to the arguments in that brief,” the motion said.

Overall, Moody is arguing that the way the initiative’s ballot summary is written is affirmatively misleading to voters on several grounds, which she says is grounds to invalidate the proposal

The attorney general’s office said that they discussed the deadline extension request with the Smart & Safe Florida campaign, which opposed a one-week extension but would accept a shorter two-day delay. Instead, the court granted the full request, making the deadline for a reply brief August 2.

“Multiple extensions of time for the same filing are discouraged,” the court said on Monday. “Absent extenuating circumstances, subsequent requests may be denied.”

State officials have already affirmed that the campaign collected enough valid signatures to secure ballot placement.

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It’s the Summer of 2023, and Cannabis Remains Federally Illegal. What’s Happening?

It was big news last fall when President Joe Biden pardoned federal offenders who had been charged and convicted of federal cannabis possession.

For over 50 years, since President Richard Nixon signed the 1970 Controlled Substances Act, cannabis has been a Schedule I federally controlled illegal drug, classified just like heroin and LSD.  Yet, Biden’s pardon proclamation did not make cannabis federally legal. However, tucked into Biden’s 2022 executive order was something no president to date has done: Biden directed the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Attorney General to “review” the legal classification of cannabis.

No formal announcement on the status of that review has been made since then.

Just two months after issuing the 2022 pardon proclamation, Biden also ramped up cannabis research expansion by signing into law the 2022 Medical Marijuana and Cannabidiol Research Expansion Act. This legislation opened up even more federal research by finally streamlining the approval process for the federal scientific studies. For the first time in American history, there now exists a cannabis medical study law that requires the U.S. attorney general to review medical study proposals within a 60-day period or request that applicants provide additional information. As of yet, though, there’s no real sense of the impact this legislation has had on actual medical cannabis research.

Before these presidential moves, the medical research of cannabis’s health benefits was almost solely the province of the states. In fact, Pennsylvania, which legislatively legalized in 2016, was the first state to require medical cannabis research as part of its medical legalization regime. Since then, other states like California and Colorado have established state-sponsored research programs, but Pennsylvania remains the nation’s first to select and pair state universities with cannabis producers to collect data and study cannabis’s efficacy. 

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Priorities: Government Officials Want Cannabis Legalisation Bill ‘as Soon as Possible’

Officials within Germany’s federal government are reportedly pushing for a bill to legalise cannabis in the country to be drawn up “as soon as possible”.

Kirsten Kappert-Gonther, a Green MP within the German parliament, has called for the Federal Health Minister to present a draft law that would legalise cannabis in the country “as soon as possible”, a report on Wednesday has claimed.

The issue has been a hot-button topic within the Bundestag for some time, despite the fact that the country has also largely failed to address its woeful energy situation which has seen inflation rise to its highest level in the country’s post-war history last year.

According to a report by Die Welt, Kappert-Gonther, who serves as the Green party’s health spokeswoman within parliament, emphasised that cannabis legalisation has already been agreed upon within Germany’s three-party ruling coalition, which consists of the Greens with the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD, red), as well as the Free Democratic Party (FDP, yellow).

Now, the main issue getting in the way of legalisation is the country’s Health Minister, Karl Lauterbach, who has yet to publish a draft bill that would legalise the substance.

“The controlled release of cannabis is agreed in the coalition agreement,” the health representative said. “The Minister of Health must now present a draft law in a timely manner.”

“I’m committed to making it happen as soon as possible,” the Green MP went on to say.

Die Welt goes on to note that — while the country’s government does want to legalise the drug — it is possible that Eurocrats from Brussels may block the legislation should they feel it interferes with EU law.

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Marijuana Law Reached Peak Absurdity in 2022

Banning a plant with hundreds of industrial and medical uses was never going to work out well, but 2022 saw marijuana prohibition reach peak absurdity, not to mention peak confusion for consumers and new businesses trying to make sense of it all.

At first glance, cannabis reform appears to be humming along smoothly. Maryland, Missouri and Rhode Island approved legalization initiatives in 2022 as states such as New Mexico and New York raced to establish regulations for legal recreational sales. New laws in mostly blue states expunged cannabis arrests from criminal records for thousands of people. President Joe Biden made moves to pardon federal marijuana prisoners and reconsider the federal “scheduling” of marijuana, a baby step toward potentially ending federal prohibition administratively. Lawmakers debated cannabis reform bills in Congress, even if the vast majority were never passed into law.

A look under the hood, however, reveals regulatory chaos in a nation where marijuana remains illegal at the federal level. For many people, 2022 will be remembered as the year “legal THC” hit the shelves, including in almost every state still under prohibition. The hemp industry, which previously brought us non-inebriating CBD in countless forms, leveraged sketchy chemistry and legal loopholes to evade regulation and sell various synthetic THC products that will absolutely get customers high regardless of where they live, making a mockery of what remains of prohibition.

Unlike traditional cannabis sold in legalized states, researchers know little about the potential risks of using synthetic THC, but “legal THC” products are now commonly sold online and in convenience stories. Sales are booming in states where traditional marijuana remains illegal, particularly among novice consumers and medicine seekers who prefer to avoid running afoul of the law. While the hemp industry has expanded access to cannabis edibles that can relieve conditions such as pain and insomnia, unregulated vapes and powerfully psychoactive synthetics are raising public health concerns.

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Pharmaceutical Industry Suffers Billions In Losses After States Legalize Marijuana, New Study Finds

The pharmaceutical industry takes a serious economic hit after states legalize marijuana—with an average market loss of nearly $10 billion for drugmakers per each legalization event—according to a first-of-its-kind study.

The peer-reviewed research article, published in the journal PLOS ONE on Wednesday, looked at stock return and prescription drug sales data for 556 pharmaceutical companies from 1996 to 2019, analyzing market trends before and after the enactment of medical and adult-use cannabis legalization laws at the state level.

The stock returns were “1.5-2 percent lower at 10 days after legalization,” the study authors founds. “Returns decreased in response to both medical and recreational legalization, for both generic and brand drugmakersInvestors anticipate a single legalization event to reduce drugmaker annual sales by $3 billion on average.”

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The Problem with Marijuana Legalization

Although the medical use of marijuana has been legalized in 37 states, its recreational use is legal only in 19 states. (South Dakota voters approved a recreational marijuana initiative in the 2020 election, but it was overturned by a state circuit judge and upheld by the state supreme court.)

That is still a lot of states with legal weed considering that it was not until 2012 that the first two states (Colorado and Washington) legalized the recreational use of marijuana. In just the last two years, eight states have legalized recreational marijuana use. 

What is even more amazing is that the states have done this while the federal government still classifies marijuana as a Schedule I controlled substance under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) with “a high potential for abuse,” “no currently accepted medical use,” and “a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug under medical supervision.”

But the problem with marijuana legalization on the state level is not that it is still illegal under federal law. The problem is that there are so many government rules and regulations on the state and local level that the marijuana market can hardly be considered free at all.

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