Tag: marijuana

Marijuana And Alcohol Businesses Should Join The Hemp Industry In The Fight For Regulation Instead Of Prohibition

In recent months, leading organizations and companies in the alcohol and marijuana space have jumped into the hemp sector, offering their support for clear federal legalization and robust oversight of hemp products.

The U.S. Hemp Roundtable, the hemp industry’s national advocacy organization, welcomes them—but asks them to join us in a framework that rejects prohibition, embraces regulation, prevents access by minors and protects retail and e-commerce for all elements of the diverse hemp industry.

Since the 2018 Farm Bill federally legalized hemp, it’s been a rollercoaster ride. After a brief gold rush, the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) refusal to regulate CBD led to a crash in prices and widespread disruption. But with a hemp industry as resilient as its stalk, innovators pioneered direct-to-consumer (DTC) sales and developed a new market for adult health and wellness products–including a hemp beverage boom which now meets growing demand for non-alcoholic options.

Today, the hemp extract market has surged to $28.4 billion, creating 328,000 agriculture and retail jobs, with a $13.2 billion employment impact and $1.5 billion generated in state tax revenues. Its popularity is not surprising—hemp products are made in the USA, harvested from crops grown by American farmers, manufactured by innovative U.S. entrepreneurs and sold by small businesses dotting the nation.

Competing interests have taken note of hemp’s success. A few marijuana multi-state operators (MSOs) have led efforts at the state and federal level to ban hemp products, and/or seek monopoly control over distribution. But the majority of marijuana advocates support regulation, not prohibition. In fact, many cannabis companies have found new life via hemp. We’re excited to join an emerging new effort to bring the entire cannabis family together in a united policy-making venture.

More recently, the alcohol industry is weighing in as hemp beverages have gained space on shelves previously reserved for liquor. Leading organizations such as the Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America and the American Beverage Licensees have called for Congress and state legislators to explicitly legalize and regulate hemp beverages, which in 2024 boasted $380 million in revenues.

But warning clouds loom. In some states, efforts to regulate beverages include bans on other types of hemp products, such as edibles or CBD tinctures fully 85 percent of the hemp product marketplace). In others, there is a rush to ban DTC sales—a lifeline to hundreds of thousands of adult consumers.

Texas has emerged as a key battleground. In response to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s (R) crusade to criminalize all hemp products, HB 28 was introduced as a hemp beverage carveout. Unfortunately, that bill would ban nearly all non-beverage hemp products, criminalize DTC and dramatically reduce the number of retailers who can sell these products.

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Trump’s DEA Pick Refuses To Detail Marijuana Rescheduling Stance In Response To Senator’s Questions

In written responses to questions from two Democratic senators as part of his confirmation, the nominee for DEA administrator, Terrance Cole, largely demurred on multiple questions around marijuana policy issues, including a pending proposal to move cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III that was initiated under the Biden administration.

Asked by Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Alex Padilla (D-CA) about his position on that proposal, Cole—who has previously voiced concerns about the dangers of marijuana and linked its use to higher suicide risk among youth—simply said that, if confirmed, he will “give the matter careful consideration after consulting with appropriate personnel within the Drug Enforcement Administration, familiarizing myself with the current status of the regulatory process, and reviewing all relevant information.”

While he gave noncommittal answers when asked about rescheduling in the written questions, Cole said during an in-person hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee last month that examining the rescheduling proposal will be “one of my first priorities” if he’s confirmed for the role, saying it’s “time to move forward” on the stalled process—but again without clarifying what end result he would like to see.

“I’m not familiar exactly where we are, but I know the process has been delayed numerous times—and it’s time to move forward,” he told Padilla at the time. “I need to understand more where [agencies] are and look at the science behind it and listen to the experts and really understand where they are in the process.”

In the newly released written questions, Booker further asked the nominee whether he felt DEA is “bound” by the scheduling process as articulated under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA).

“As in all matters, if confirmed, I would look at the individualized facts and circumstances and follow the law and any policies of the Department,” Cole said.

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New York Governor Signs Budget After Lawmakers Remove Her Plan To Let Police Use Marijuana Odor Against Drivers

The state budget bill signed into law by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) on Friday notably does not include a controversial marijuana provision the governor proposed earlier this year that would have allowed police to use the smell of marijuana as probable cause that a driver is impaired and then force them to take a drug test.

Amendments made in the legislature this week removed the provision, which a coalition of 60 reform groups had argued in a letter to Hochul and top lawmakers would “repeat some of the worst harms of the War on Drugs” and allow law enforcement to “restart unconstitutional racial profiling of drivers.”

The governor’s plan drew criticism from not just reform advocates but also the state’s Assembly majority leader and the governor-appointed head of the Office of Cannabis Management (OCM), who’d previously said the plan would undermine the goals of legalization and was “not going to work for New York.”

Historically, New York has been home to some of the country’s starkest racial disparities when it comes to enforcement of laws against marijuana. For example, Black people in New York City in the 2010s were more than nine times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than white people.

In Hochul’s original budget bill, a line would have added “the odor of cannabis, burnt cannabis or other drug” as a “reasonable cause” for law enforcement to stop and search a vehicle. An amended bill approved by lawmakers this week, however, removed that provision.

After both chambers approved the changes, the legislation went to the governor on Thursday and was signed into law the next day.

As for other cannabis-related provisions in the new state budget, one change eliminates the $229,000 annual salary for the chair of the state’s Cannabis Control Board (CCB).

That official, Tremaine Wright, said this week that she will not leave her post.

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Using Marijuana Reduces Alcohol Cravings In People Who Drink A Lot, Federally Funded Study Shows

New federally funded research into the effects of cannabis on alcohol use finds that people who used marijuana immediately before drinking subsequently consumed fewer alcoholic beverages and reported lower cravings for alcohol.

“We found that across the entire sample, self-administering cannabis before alcohol significantly reduced alcohol consumption compared to when alcohol was offered without cannabis,” authors wrote in a study preprint published late last month on the open-access website PsyArXiv.

“Furthermore,” they continued, “we found that cannabis and alcohol co-administration was associated with significant acute reduction in alcohol craving compared to alcohol administration alone.”

The study, funded by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, provides further evidence of a substitution effect, in which users report replacing some or all of their alcohol use with cannabis.

An eight-person research team from Colorado State University and the University of Colorado looked at the behavior of 62 adults who used both marijuana and alcohol and who engaged in heavy drinking for at least three months.

Each person participated in two separate sessions in which they could drink up to five alcoholic beverages—an initial priming drink, followed by up to four more optional drinks offered at 15-minute intervals.

In one of the two sessions, participants were first directed to consume marijuana in a manner of their choosing and at their typical dose, which was weighed and recorded.

When subjects used alcohol alone, they drank on average two self-administered beverages. With cannabis added to the mix, the average number of self-administered drinks was 1.5—roughly 25 percent lower.

And while not every participant drank less after using marijuana, those who did “reported reductions in alcohol craving at several timepoints after consuming cannabis and alcohol compared to alcohol alone,” the report says.

Alcohol cravings among those who drank more or the same after consuming cannabis either stayed level or increased, it notes.

The study concludes that “for some individuals who drink heavily, cannabis may serve as a substitute for alcohol, and craving reduction may be the mechanism through which this occurs.”

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Trump Administration’s DOGE Cancels University’s Contract To Monitor Marijuana Potency

The Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is touting the cancellation of another marijuana-related federal grant—this time targeting a program that’s long tracked cannabis potency levels in seized illicit products.

The contract has historically been awarded to the University of Mississippi, which for decades was the sole federally authorized cultivator of marijuana for research purposes. But it’s also received funding through the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) to monitor cannabinoid content such as THC and CBD in confiscated cannabis.

That contract has now been ended as part of DOGE’s mission to make significant government spending cuts.

“In the last two days, agencies terminated 148 wasteful contracts with a ceiling value of $420M and savings of $198M, including a $143K HHS contract for the ‘potency monitoring of confiscated marijuana samples,’” DOGE said in an X post on Monday.

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Researchers Announce They’ve Discovered A New Cannabinoid In Marijuana

Researchers have announced that they’ve successfully identified a new cannabinoid—cannabielsoxa—produced by the marijuana plant as well as a number of other compounds “reported for the first time from the flowers of C. sativa.”

The team of government and university researchers out of South Korea also evaluated 11 compounds in cannabis for antitumor effects in neuroblastoma cells, finding that seven “revealed strong inhibitory activity.”

Authors said the findings represent “an initial step toward developing a product for the treatment of neuroblastoma,” a cancer they note “is the most common solid tumor in children and the most frequent malignancy in the first year of life.”

Published this month in the journal Pharmaceuticals, the paper says researchers used chromatographic techniques to isolate the compounds. They then examined their molecular structures and used a metabolic testing method to assess their toxicity to neuroblastoma cells.

“This study successfully isolated a new cannabinoid and six known cannabinoid compounds, along with a new chlorin-type compound and three additional chlorine-type compounds,” the study says, “which were reported for the first time from the flowers of C. sativa.”

Two of the compounds identified for the first time in cannabis—132-hydroxypheophorbide b ethyl ester and ligulariaphytin A—are described as “chlorin-type compounds.”

They, along with five other known cannabinoids—cannabidiol (CBD), cannabidiolic acid (CBDA), cannabidiolic acid methyl ester (CBDA-ME), delta-8 THC and cannabichromene (CBG)—”could be considered as the potential compounds for antitumor effects against neuroblastomas,” researchers found.

Results of the antitumor analyses “demonstrated that cannabinoid compounds had stronger inhibitory effects on neuroblastoma cells than chlorin-type compounds,” the paper notes.

The new cannbinoid, cannabielsoxa, was not among the compounds that researchers identified as potentially toxic to neuroblastoma cells, however.

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Supreme Court Gives Trump Administration More Time To Consider Challenging Marijuana And Gun Ownership Ruling

The U.S. Supreme Court has approved a request from the government’s top lawyer that sought more time to consider a challenge to a February appeals court ruling around the federal prohibition on gun ownership by people who consume marijuana.

An order by Justice Brett Kavanaugh last week granted government lawyers an extension until June 5 to decide whether to appeal a February ruling from the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer had previously requested the extension, telling the high court that the government needed more time to consider the case.

“The Solicitor General has not yet determined whether to file a petition for a writ of certiorari in this case,” said Sauer’s three-page filing. “The additional time sought in this application is needed to continue consultation within the government and to assess the legal and practical impact of the court of appeals’ ruling.”

The case concerns a defendant, Keshon Daveon Baxter, who was found in possession of both a firearm and a bag of marijuana. The government charged him under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3), which prohibits gun ownership by “unlawful” users of controlled substances.

Baxter argued in district court that the prohibition was itself illegal, contending both that “unlawful” use was too vague in the statute to be enforceable and also that the government’s ban on drug users’ possession of firearms was unconstitutional under the Second Amendment.

The lower court rejected both arguments—a ruling Baxter appealed to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.

It a February opinion, an Eighth Circuit panel upheld the portion of the district court’s decision denying Baxter’s vagueness claim but reversed the lower court’s ruling on the constitutionality of the firearms ban. However, judges wrote that there were insufficient factual findings in the record “for this Court to review Baxter’s as-applied Second Amendment challenge.”

Nevertheless, the Eighth Circuit wrote, “We reverse the district court’s ruling on Baxter’s as-applied Second Amendment challenge and remand to the district court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”

Had the Supreme Court not granted the government’s extension, in the case, U.S. v. Baxter, a decision whether to appeal the Eighth Circuit ruling would have been due May 6.

Sauer, an appointee of President Donald Trump, formally assumed his role as solicitor general earlier this month. He previously helped represented Trump in his landmark case on presidential immunity.

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Montana Lawmakers Pass Bill Allowing Cannabis Compacts Between Indian Tribes And The Governor

Though House Bill 952 is only two pages long, it has the potential to have major impacts on Montana tribes, according to those who advocated for its passage.

Sponsored by Rep. Frank Smith, D-Poplar, Sioux, the bill was requested by the State-Tribal Relations Interim Committee to help tribes navigate barriers in entering and engaging in the cannabis industry. It cleared the Legislature earlier this month, getting support from most Democratic legislators and enough majority Republicans to pass.

This is Smith’s last year as a legislator before retirement. He was first elected in 1999 and is one of the longest-serving current members. During a recent Montana American Indian Caucus meeting, Smith was wished a happy retirement and congratulated for ending with what members called such an impactful bill.

Many of the challenges tribes face in growing and selling marijuana stem from past legislation. House Bill 701, a 153-page bill that became law in 2021, established laws to regulate newly legalized recreational cannabis. The bill placed major constrictions on tribes in regards to cannabis regulations.

HB 701 created three major hurdles for tribes when it was enacted.

First, it only allowed for one combined-use marijuana licence per tribe, meaning each tribe could only have one location for growing, packaging, distributing and selling cannabis.

Second, it restricted tribes to a single-tier canopy licence, meaning a tribe’s dispensary and the growing operation must consist in a maximum of a single 1,000-square-foot building.

Third, it required tribes to build dispensaries at least 150 miles outside of reservation boundaries and in a “green county” that allows the sale of cannabis, essentially restricting tribes to operate in highly saturated markets, an issue raised by Patrick Yawakie, co-founder of Red Medicine, LLC, an organization that provides professional civic engagement and lobbying services to tribes.

Yawakie said this year’s HB 952 will address many of those barriers. He helped draft the bill and said its language was mainly pulled from the Washington state-tribal cannabis compact, which allows Washington tribes and the state enter into agreements to regulate and define cannabis operations within their reservations. Twenty-two out of the 29 federally recognized tribes in Washington have compacts with the state and more are in the process.

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Trump’s Solicitor General Asks Supreme Court For More Time To Weigh Challenge To Gun Ban For Marijuana Consumers

The government’s top lawyer is asking the Supreme Court for more time to consider whether to challenge a February appeals court ruling concerning the federal prohibition on gun ownership by people who consume marijuana. It’s the latest development in a series of recent cases around the constitutionality of the firearm restriction.

The new filing, from Solicitor General D. John Sauer, concerns a case in which the defendant, Keshon Daveon Baxter, was found in possession of both a firearm and a bag of marijuana. The government charged him under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3), which prohibits gun ownership by “unlawful” users of controlled substances.

Baxter argued in district court that the prohibition was itself illegal, contending both that “unlawful” use was too vague in the statute to be enforceable and also that the government’s ban on drug users’ possession of firearms was unconstitutional under the Second Amendment.

The lower court rejected both arguments—a ruling Baxter appealed to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.

It a February opinion, an Eighth Circuit panel upheld the portion of the district court’s decision denying Baxter’s vagueness claim but reversed the lower court’s ruling on the constitutionality of the firearms ban. However, judges wrote that there were insufficient factual findings in the record “for this Court to review Baxter’s as-applied Second Amendment challenge.”

Nevertheless, the Eighth Circuit wrote, “We reverse the district court’s ruling on Baxter’s as-applied Second Amendment challenge and remand to the district court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”

The federal government currently has until May 6 to decide whether to file a writ of certiorari asking the Supreme Court to review the appeals court ruling. The new filing from Sauer asks for a 30-day extension on that deadline.

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Trucking Industry Says Positive Marijuana Tests And ‘Sometimes Outdated’ Federal Regulations Are Contributing To National Driver Shortage

A recent policy paper from a pair of companies in the trucking industry says the sector was short about 80,000 drivers last year—an issue it asserts was exacerbated by workers testing positive for marijuana under the federal Department of Transportation’s (DOT) strict, zero-tolerance drug policy.

“A significant number of otherwise qualified drivers fail pre-employment or random drug tests due to marijuana use,” says the new report. “These drivers are often unaware of the DOT’s strict zero-tolerance policy or mistakenly believe that legal marijuana use in their home state is acceptable under federal law.”

Titled “Cannabis, Compliance and Driver Retention,” the white paper was published by fleet management firm Fleetworthy in partnership with the trade publication FreightWaves.

As marijuana has “moved from a largely prohibited substance to a widely legalized and socially accepted drug,” it says, “these cultural and legal shifts create complex challenges for both carriers and drivers.”

Other obstacles it points to are what it calls “the widespread proliferation of marijuana and CBD products” and “rigid (sometimes outdated) DOT regulations.”

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