Cannabis News

CarolKing

Singer of songs and a vapor connoisseur

December 30, 2016
Year in Review: Top 10 notable developments in the marijuana industry from 2016
By Omar Sacirbey and Bart Schaneman

In the annals of marijuana history, 2016 will most certainly stand out as a watershed year for the business of cannabis.

From huge wins on Election Day and a flurry of investment activity to big courtroom victories and recreational legalization momentum in Canada, cannabis made headlines in the U.S. and
 

Baron23

Well-Known Member

There is a bit of a problem on this point. It's called standing. A particularized harm to an individual that gives the right to have your case be heard in the courts. Generally, the only one who could sue on a matter like this would be the top enforcement officer in the state.

An example had to do with the complex history of same sex marriage in my state. At the end, there was a state Supreme Court decision saying an initiative keeping marriage between a man and a woman was constitutional. (There are two decisions at the state supreme court and this is the second and operative one.) A federal judge found the initiative's statute unconstitutional. The good officers of the state with the power (Governor and Attorney General) decided they would not appeal.

Who can appeal?

After much folderol and detour, the supreme Supreme Court found the state's sponsors of the initiative did not have standing when the State's officers did not act in the State's stead.

In other words, a lawsuit is probably not going to end the lack of motivation on the part of MA's legislature. Not only would the members be immune from suit, but also it will have to be a state officer with the power to prosecute any suit. I assume they will make the same choice of the legislature for whatever reason. There seems no way to force them to act here. This is a political question. Those who are thwarting the will of the people need be removed from office by a vote.​
First we must kill all the lawyers....well, except for you @OldNewbie ! haha
 
Baron23,

Baron23

Well-Known Member
Massachusetts governor signs bill delaying pot shop openings

BOSTON — Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker signed a bill Friday aimed at delaying by up to six months the opening of marijuana shops in the state until mid-2018.

An aide to the Republican governor said Baker shares the desire of state lawmakers to thoroughly prepare for the launch of a new industry distributing a controlled substance.

Baker is “committed to adhering to the will of the voters by implementing the new law as effectively and responsibly as possible,” the governor’s communications director Lizzy Guyton said.

Baker’s decision to sign the bill came as a small group of marijuana activists protested outside the Statehouse.

Members of the Massachusetts Cannabis Reform Coalition and the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws faulted lawmakers for passing the bill during end-of-year sessions and said the delay “flies in the face of the will of the voters” who approved the ballot question legalizing pot.

The House and Senate passed the bill Wednesday without a public hearing and without debate during informal sessions in both chambers. Only a handful of lawmakers were present.

The ballot initiative that allows adults 21 and over to possess and use limited amounts of recreational marijuana and grow as many as a dozen pot plants in their homes was approved by 53.7 percent of voters on Nov. 8 and took effect Dec. 15.

The action by lawmakers doesn’t change that. But what it’s almost certain to do is push back the timetable for opening retail marijuana stores from the beginning of 2018 until the middle of that year.

Senate President Stan Rosenberg and House Speaker Robert DeLeo, both Democrats, said pushing back the deadlines will give lawmakers more time improve the law by considering issues that were not addressed in the ballot question.

RachelRamone Donlan was among the dozen or so protesters outside the Statehouse. The 45-year-old Braintree resident said she and other cannabis activists are “100 percent outraged” that a small group of lawmakers undid the will of the people. She said she’s even angrier that Baker signed the bill.

Donlan also warned of what she called a legal gray area that will confuse people.

“We are in fear that people are going to get arrested in the next six months because there will be a time frame when it’s legal to possess it but you cannot buy it,” Donlan said. “We’re losing out on tax revenue and we’re fueling the black market.”

Among the key deadlines that would be put off six months include the current March 1 deadline for state Treasurer Deb Goldberg to appoint a cannabis control commission to oversee the recreational marijuana market; a Sept. 15 deadline for the commission to approve detailed regulations; an Oct. 1 deadline for accepting applications for retail marijuana outlets, and the Jan. 1, 2018, deadline for licensing the first pot shops.

For now, it remains illegal in Massachusetts to sell pot except to registered medical marijuana patients.

This action is so outrageous and so flies in the face of direct democracy, that I posted the entire article. May the wrath of the MA voters descend on these venal, asshole politicians (perhaps along with a really bad case of chronic psoriasis! LOL).


Also for your reading pleasure:

4 Promising Cannabis Studies and Research from 2016


 
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macbill

Oh No! Mr macbill!!
Staff member
Article on CBDs

A powerful new form of medical marijuana, without the high

“CBD has been a game-changer for medical marijuana,” says Martin Lee, the director of Project CBD, a Northern California nonprofit that promotes use of the compound. “Its safety and lack of psychoactivity undermines any argument that it should be illegal. It’s really shifted the national discussion on this issue.”
 

cybrguy

Putin is a War Criminal
This is actually a little bit of a concern for me as regards the future of legal cannabis. With some states already only allowing concentrates, and some only allowing CBD concentrates, there is a risk to those of us who's benefits are tied to THC. The concern with cannabis being an "inebriate" are poorly placed, I believe, and allow for a "teetotaler" kind of perspective that may still interfere with cannabis's acceptance around the country. Lets not forget that there are still 3 states that are dry (alcohol) by default, and counties that want an exception to that have to go through a lot of aggravation to overrule the states default prohibition. That may end up a model for some states acceptance (or lack there of) of cannabis.

All that being said it is better to have CBD strains or even concentrates than nothing, but "permission to exclude" is not helpful in the effort towards more universal acceptance.
 

grokit

well-worn member
Cannabis reform was going to be on shaky ground with either of these two candidates :2c:

WikiLeaks Shows Hillary Clinton Was Against Pot Legalization
In 'All Senses Of the Word'

A longtime drug warrior, Clinton has softened her public positions on marijuana.
But does she mean it?


There isn't much to divine from John Podesta's hacked emails (published earlier this week by WikiLeaks) when it comes to Hillary Clinton's supposed evolution on marijuana legalization.

But in an email circulated among senior Clinton campaign staffers concerned about the content of Clinton's paid corporate speeches and appearances—which includes an 80-page attachment detailing "a lot of policy positions that we should give an extra scrub"—a brief portion of Clinton's Q & A with Xerox CEO Ursula Burns in 2014 shows Clinton's staunch opposition to any form of marijuana legalization:

URSULA BURNS: So long means thumbs up, short means thumbs down; or long means I support, short means I don't. I'm going to start with — I'm going to give you about ten long-shorts.

SECRETARY CLINTON: Even if you could make money on a short, you can't answer short.

URSULA BURNS: You can answer short, but you got to be careful about letting anybody else know that. They will bet against you. So legalization of pot?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Short in all senses of the word. (emphasis added)

That was in March 2014, and even if it's the briefest of exchanges, it says something that the Clinton campaign suspected this message of staunch prohibitionism needed "an extra scrub."

The newly-leaked documents showing Clinton’s strong opposition to legalization in a private appearance, combined with comments from the candidate’s daughter Chelsea last month implying that marijuana use can lead to death, could present an added sense of urgency for Clinton to evolve on the question of ending prohibition prior to Election Day.

Clinton was on the record opposing medical marijuana in 2007—she supported "research," but not decriminalization—but just three months after saying she opposed marijuana legalization "in all senses of the word," she said on a CNN town hall that "there should be availability (of marijuana) under appropriate circumstances." She also said she would allow Colorado and Washington—which had just fully legalized recreational use of marijuana for adults—to serve as "laboratories of democracy" and reserved the right to offer her opinion on the subject at an unspecified later date.

Also in 2014, she offered the standard "gateway drug" trope as a defense of prohibition in a KPCC radio interview:

I think the feds should be attuned to the way marijuana is still used as a gateway drug and how the drug cartels from Latin America use marijuana to get footholds in states, so there can't be a total absence of law enforcement, but what I want to see, and I think we should be much more focused on this, is really doing good research so we know what it is we're approving.

The Hillary Clinton running for president in 2016—who had to "evolve" a number of her long-held policies and supposed principles just to make it through her bruising primary battle with Bernie Sanders—now fully supports both medical marijuana and the removal of the drug from the DEA's Schedule I classification.

The question is, which Hillary Clinton should be believed?

The lifelong drug warrior who as recently as 2011 seemed to misunderstand both prohibition and supply-and-demand when she said drug legalization was an impossibility "because there is just too much money in it"? Or the chastened Democratic presidential nominee hoping to energize the youth vote and perhaps even convince some libertarians she can be trusted in her promises regarding criminal justice reform?

http://reason.com/blog/2016/10/14/wikileaks-hillary-clinton-against-pot
http://www.marijuana.com/blog/news/2016/10/clinton-gave-thumbs-down-to-legal-marijuana-leak-shows/

To see what else Hillary Clinton has said about cannabis law reform, check out
Marijuana.com’s comprehensive guide to the candidates.


:myday:
 
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cybrguy

Putin is a War Criminal
Obviously you have been consuming quite a bit. You seem to have missed the fact that Donald Trump won. Whatever Hillary's plans might have been they don't mean dick now. What matters is what Trump may or may not do...

I have a very uncomfortable feeling based on who Donald is choosing that going forward the future of cannabis in the US is going to have some major roadblocks in its way...
 

grokit

well-worn member
Obviously you have been consuming quite a bit. You seem to have missed the fact that Donald Trump won.
edit: You're kidding! Trump actually won :freak:?

Who could the dems have run that wouldn't beat a reality show con-man? Lemme guess; was it the retread that lost the nomination over eight years ago, then became a war criminal in the meantime?

As a cannabis patient, I have seen that recreational progress can actually impede existing medical users in the name of making a profit. So I am actually okay with both trump and hillary taking a pause.

I am under no illusion that either one of these two tools would support laws freeing our sacred plant.

No matter how much I consume :spliff:

:myday:
 
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Baron23

Well-Known Member
US Sen. Warren seeks to pull pot shops out of banking limbo

BOSTON — As marijuana shops sprout in states that have legalized the drug, they face a critical stumbling block — lack of access to the kind of routine banking services other businesses take for granted.

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, is leading an effort to make sure vendors working with legal marijuana businesses, from chemists who test marijuana for harmful substances to firms that provide security, don’t have their banking services taken away.

It’s part of a wider effort by Warren and others to bring the burgeoning $7 billion marijuana industry in from a fiscal limbo she said forces many shops to rely solely on cash, making them tempting targets for criminals (cont)
 

howie105

Well-Known Member
If you have money and you can't bank it you have manage it some other way and that may mean doing something shady and/or off the books, which the suits don't want. So if the commercial operations can survive the changing of the guards in DC I suspect the suits will straighten things out, if for no other reason then to get their cut.
 

Baron23

Well-Known Member
If you have money and you can't bank it you have manage it some other way and that may mean doing something shady and/or off the books, which the suits don't want. So if the commercial operations can survive the changing of the guards in DC I suspect the suits will straighten things out, if for no other reason then to get their cut.
Oh, I agree completely. Call me a cynic but I don't think politicians even scratch their ass unless its directly serves their self-interest. In this case, yes....at least one result of clearing banking hurdles for MMJ companies will be to ensure all taxes are properly collected...mostly so they can then be doled out to politico's favorite voting groups.

Still, would be a very good think overall for MMJ industry.
 

grokit

well-worn member
Remember the rethuglicans had to sue to get obama's executive order overturned that would have made check-cashing outlets and pawn shops (among others) unbankable as well, if not they would be paying their rent/mortgage in cash too; this obviously affects the chain up to landlords banks tax collectors etc.

Obvious shenanigans on both sides, the race to see who gets the biggest cut off the top of our plant :evil:

:myday:
 
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grokit

well-worn member
Cannabis ingredient to be classed as medicine in UK
The move by the UK regulator raises concerns that the public could get mixed messages about
the safety and legality of cannabis.


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Products that contain a cannabis-based ingredient called cannabidiol, or CBD, are to be classed as medicines by the UK medicines regulator from this year.

The Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said it had looked at CBD because a number of manufacturing companies had been making "overt medicinal claims" about products.

Cannabis has two key ingredients - THC and CBD. The THC gets you stoned, and it can also make you anxious and psychotic.

But, isolated, CBD has the opposite effect, often calming people down - which is why some people are using it in small doses as medicine.

While some users are pleased that CBDs are finally being recognised as medicine, others worry about their supply.

...
 

Baron23

Well-Known Member
Marijuana advocates to hand out joints at Trump inauguration

WASHINGTON — A group of marijuana legalization advocates plan to hand out thousands of joints during President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.

Pro-marijuana organization DCMJ will begin distributing the 4,200 joints 8 a.m. on Jan. 20 on the west side of Dupont Circle. The participants will then walk to the National Mall.

At 4 minutes and 20 seconds into Trump’s speech, DCMJ founder Adam Eidinger says protesters will light up.

The giveaway is legal as long as it’s done on District of Columbia land. Those smoking on federal land risk arrest.

Eidinger says the group wants to send a message that the federal government should legalize cannabis.

Marijuana advocates are concerned about what actions attorney general nominee Sen. Jeff Sessions would take on the issue. Sessions has previously spoken out against marijuana legalization.
 

His_Highness

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king
Marijuana advocates to hand out joints at Trump inauguration

WASHINGTON — A group of marijuana legalization advocates plan to hand out thousands of joints during President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.

Pro-marijuana organization DCMJ will begin distributing the 4,200 joints 8 a.m. on Jan. 20 on the west side of Dupont Circle. The participants will then walk to the National Mall.

At 4 minutes and 20 seconds into Trump’s speech, DCMJ founder Adam Eidinger says protesters will light up.

The giveaway is legal as long as it’s done on District of Columbia land. Those smoking on federal land risk arrest.

Eidinger says the group wants to send a message that the federal government should legalize cannabis.

Marijuana advocates are concerned about what actions attorney general nominee Sen. Jeff Sessions would take on the issue. Sessions has previously spoken out against marijuana legalization.

Is it just me or does fucking around with the president elect by lighting up to at the inauguration to make a point seem ..... counterproductive to the cause?
 

Baron23

Well-Known Member
America’s $6.7 billion marijuana habit, mapped

The marijuana industry is at a crossroads. Voters have approved recreational marijuana measures in eight states plus the District of Columbia. When these laws become fully implemented in the next few years, more than one in five American adults will live in places where they can walk into a store and legally purchase marijuana.

According to one estimate by ArcView Group, a marijuana industry consulting firm, the legal marijuana market rang up $6.7 billion in sales in 2016.

Legal or not, millions of Americans already use marijuana regularly. According to the most recent National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 8.3 percent of Americans age 12 and over -- 22 million people -- used marijuana on a monthly basis in 2015. And close to 37 million people used marijuana at least once that year.

The latest data release from that survey breaks those numbers down even further, looking at marijuana consumption at the state level. It finds that there's considerable variation in the prevalence of marijuana use by (cont)

I made my son cannabis cookies. They changed his life.

It took me awhile to perfect the cookie recipe. I experimented with ingredients: Blueberry, Strawberry, Sour Diesel, White Widow, Bubba Kush, AK-47 — all strains of cannabis, which I stored, mixed with glycerin, in meticulously labeled jars on a kitchen shelf. After the cookies finished baking, I’d taste a few crumbs and annotate the effects in a notebook. Often, I felt woozy. One variation put me to sleep. When I had convinced myself that a batch was okay, I’d give a cookie to my 9-year-old son.

At the time he was consumed by violent rages. He would bang his head, scream for hours and literally eat his shirts. At dinnertime, he threw his plates so forcefully that there was food stuck on the ceiling. He would punch and scratch himself and others, such that people would look at the red streaks on our bodies and ask us, gingerly, if we had cats.

But when I got the cookies right, he calmed down. His aggressions became less ferocious and less frequent. Mealtimes became less fraught. He was able to maintain enough self-composure that he even learned how to ride a bike — despite every expert telling us it would never happen.

I realize that some people may look askance at parents who keep pot in the house, let alone conduct semi-legal medical experiments on their children. But it’s time we reexamine the cultural and legal restrictions we put on cannabis, especially as it pertains to kids. My son’s life has changed because of it.

Since he was an infant, I’d watched my son struggle. At 18 months, he underwent two major spinal-cord tumor surgeries, only weeks apart, and was immobilized in a cast for a year. After that, the violent rages began — sometimes as many as 300 in a day (cont...and this is a really good article and worth reading in full IMO)






 
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