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A California lawmaker is on a mission to restrict types of testing that puts cannabis users’ employment unnecessarily at risk. Assemblyperson Bill Quirk has introduced Assembly Bill 1256 to ban most employers from using hair and urine tests as justification for refusing a job to someone, or firing them. 

The proposed law would also let previously discriminated against employees seek legal action against previous drug-testing employers. 

There are many problems with drug testing. One of the main issues is that hair and urine tests are generally designed to identify people who use cannabis, as THC stays in the body for months longer than other substances, such as MDMA, methamphetamine, LSD, and opioids.

Further, cannabis hair and urine tests are notoriously inaccurate. In most cases, they’re unable to differentiate between individuals who are hopelessly stoned while taking the test and people who last puffed two or three months ago. 

Blood tests are a far more accurate testing method for determining current inebriation, and would not be banned by the proposed legislation. 

Right now, California employers are not permitted to randomly drug test employees, but they are allowed to require drug testing of new hires — even with no suspicion that said individual consumes cannabis.

“You can’t judge a worker by their urine,” said Dale Gieringer, California NORML’s director, before leading into a stellar pun. “If you do that, you’re going to have a piss-poor workforce.”

To further explain, he offered the metaphor of looking in a person’s trash can for alcohol bottles to find out if they are currently drunk. 

“Urine tests are like going through employees’ trash every week and looking around for empty beer cans or liquor bottles,” Gieringer said. “And if you find some, the person must’ve been drunk on the job,”

The point is that such proof, just like marijuana discovered by hair or urine tests, is no indicator of an individual’s current capabilities or state of inebriation. 

“You’re allowed to do anything else legal off the job,” Gieringer continued. “You can drink, smoke and fire guns, and stuff like that, as long as it’s off the job.” 

Not all jobs would be protected by the initiative, however. Some employers are required by federal regulation to drug test for cannabis. Building and construction jobs would also be exempted, as would employers that would lose “monetary or licensing-related benefit” if they decided to cease drug testing. 

Gieringer said that he thinks the bill will take two years to pass the state legislature. 

In February, California Assemblyperson Rob Bonta introduced a bill that would ban employers from discriminating against individuals who use medicinal marijuana. That law would not apply to certain vocations like airplane pilots, police, truck drivers, and employees under federal contracts. 

Even five years after California voters passed Proposition 64, which legalized adult use of cannabis, not everyone is convinced that such protections for people who use cannabis are a good idea. 

“Allowing drug use in the workplace — including requiring an employer to accommodate an employee’s marijuana use — could jeopardize the safety of other workers as well as the public,” the California Chamber of Commerce stated in a February statement.

Bonta noted to the Los Angeles Times that 16 other states have such protections already on the books. 

If you find yourself facing an employer’s cannabis test anywhere for any reason, don’t forget that we’ve got you covered with the 2020 edition of our “How To Take a Drug Test Guide.” 

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Interested to know how our country is perpetuating the interminable War on Drugs? Well, the DEA just released its 2020 National Drug Threat Assessment, and the report is full of stats on the United States’ most popular illegal addictions, new trends in intoxicants, and foreign trade — a.k.a. transnational criminal organizations in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, China, and other countries. 

The report states that Mexico is still the biggest importer of the United States’ numero uno drug of choice (which is weed, duh), plus methamphetamine, and heroin. The US sourced 92 percent of its heroin from Mexico in 2019, according to product analyzed by a DEA tracing program. The Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation Cartels continue to be identified as Mexico’s biggest drug trafficking organizations.

But, in terms of cannabis, the report says that Mexican weed in the States has “largely been supplanted by domestic-produced marijuana.”

As proof, the DEA explains that agency-driven marijuana seizures along the US-Mexican border have decreased by over 80 percent since 2013. 2009 was the high water mark for seizures along the Southwest Border. The agency nabbed close to 1.3 million kilograms that year.

NORML political director Justin Strekal commented on the report in a statement saying, “States’ decisions to legally regulate cannabis has, as expected, led to a precipitous drop in demand for imported cannabis and has significantly disrupted the illicit cannabis trade in Mexico. These are important developments to emphasize as additional states continue to discuss replacing cannabis criminalization policies with those that seek to legalize and regulate the marijuana marketplace.”

The DEA report suggests that Mexican marijuana “may increase in quality” to catch up to US supply.

The US and Mexican cannabis economies have been intertwined, if not indistinguishable, for decades. Now that Mexico is on track to federally legalize recreational cannabis (it has already regulated the medicinal use of the drug), drug justice advocates have raised the alarm that US and Canadian cannabis corporations are exercising undue influence on the shape of the legalization to come. 

In the National Drug Threat Assessment report — which is fascinating for more reasons than just the corny graphic design work, you can see for yourself here — the federal agency also states that it’s far from done persecuting unlicensed US marijuana farmers. In 2019, it seized over four million plants and 363,098 pounds of processed marijuana within the nation’s borders. 

Nevertheless, it bemoans the fact that due to the 2018 US Farm Bill, which federally legalized hemp production, “traffickers use their state-issued hemp documentation as cover for large-scale marijuana grows and marijuana loads transported across state lines. Additionally, large hemp grows are sometimes used to hide marijuana plants interspersed throughout the hemp plants.”

“Domestic use of marijuana remains high and is likely to increase as state legalization continues and perception of risk by potential users continues to decrease,” the report warns.

But while the DEA continues to imply that cannabis is risky, reports of synthetic cannabinoid usage went down 21 percent between 2018 and 2019. There has been an 85 percent drop in calls to poison centers about people who have taken synthetic cannabinoids since 2015. 

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Years after the Mexican Supreme Court declared cannabis prohibition unconstitutional, the country’s Senate approved a bill that would finally legalize adult-use marijuana. Now, the country’s lower legislative house, the Chamber of Deputies, appears poised to vote on its version of the legislation next week. 

The only problem is there’s no bill. 

Marijuana Moment reports that although the Chamber of Deputies’ Political Coordination Board has scheduled the floor vote for March 9, “there is still no draft opinion,” according to legislator and health committee member Martha Tagle Martínez. 

When a draft does surface, Martínez says, it will need to pass through the legislative health and justice committees before a general vote. 

Advocates of drug policy equity are getting anxious about the possible changes that have been made to the mysterious legislative draft since the Senate approved its own copy in November. Drug justice coalition Regulación por la Paz announced on February 24 that it received a copy of proposed modifications to the Senate bill and says it prioritizes the profits of international cannabis corporations over the rights of Mexican users and consumers. 

In a press release, the coalition said these proposed changes include the removal of business license equity quotas meant to prioritize individuals from communities impacted by the War on Drugs. The release also says there’s been a creation of a vertical business license, on top of the five license-divisions that the Senate recently added, that would favor larger companies. 

Just as troubling, according to Regulación por la Paz, is the proposed creation of a registry of people who are allowed to grow cannabis plants in their home. This homegrow license would reportedly have to be renewed every year. 

Such rumored changes have frustrated activists, who found that even the Senate’s version of cannabis legalization did not properly center around users’ rights, which are at the core of the 2018 Supreme Court decision.

In January, Mexico’s Secretary of Health released the country’s first medicinal marijuana regulations, making therapeutic cannabis only available through state-approved pharmacies. 

Impatience over the many delays in the recreational legislative process have led to the proliferation of cannabis user protest camps across the country. The largest, run by the group Movimiento Cannábico Mexicano [Mexican Cannabis Movement], has occupied Plaza Luis Pasteur in front of the Mexican Senate for over a year, and boasts both a veritable cannabis jungle and an expansive “tolerance zone,” a protest for cannabis consumption that attracts large crowds to the site every day. 

The tolerance zone for smoking has become so expansive — and so has the sale of flower and paraphernalia on site — that a group of senators sent a formal petition to the Mexico City government last week to ask for its removal. 

A smaller cannabis protest camp with a surrounding tolerance zone has arisen on Avenida de los Insurgentes near the Roma neighborhood. 

Last week, Movimiento Cannábico Mexicano activists attempted to install a protest camp in Monterrey’s Macroplaza, but had their belongings confiscated by police. The surprising show of force suggests that law enforcement outside of Mexico’s capital may not be as amenable to accommodating cannabis activism in what will soon be — given the eventual progression of legislation — the largest legal marijuana market on earth. 

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The governor of Alabama has to make a decision today about whether to sign into effect Senate Bill 236, a medical marijuana measure that has been weakened from its original version. In its final form, the legislation would extend access to cannabis oil for kids who experience seizures and create a commission to study medical marijuana and make recommendations to lawmakers on potential policy changes.

WHNT News 19 reported that Representative Mike Ball — who was instrumental in the initial passage of Carly’s Law, which guarantees access to kids who suffer seizures — told the channel he would be “shocked” if Governor Kay Ivey does not sign the bill.

The governor’s office has said Ivey is reviewing the bill. If she chooses not to sign it before 11:59 p.m. on Monday, it will die.

Though the bill was the subject of much floor debate, it passed the House with a whopping majority, 80-19, on May 31. “The opposition comes from people who practice politics in the name of religion,” said Ball.

Republican state senator Tim Melson was the legislation’s sponsor. He originally presented a version of the bill that would legalize the sale of medical marijuana for patients with sign off from a doctor.

“People realize we need to quit thinking everything’s wrong because it was taboo in the past,” he said after the bill got its final Senate approval. “It doesn’t mean we don’t need to be looking for the good in it.”

Alabama is a state that has long shown reluctance to enact marijuana regulation. Though Melson’s version passed the Senate, in the House it was watered down. The bill’s proponents accepted the dialing back of legalizing sales of medicinal cannabis for a list of 12 health conditions and the establishment of a patient ID system. The bill’s allowances reduced mainly to the establishment of the investigatory commission and the extension of the Carly’s Law study.

Advocates hoped that at least, the findings of the commission would provide groundwork to create future legislation — the legislation states that it would be required to submit recommendations by the beginning of December. The commission would be comprised of 15 members, including four doctors, three lawyers, and other appointees knowledgeable in mental health and the business community.

“We were about to make a big step,” said Ball. “Had it not been blocked we would have, it would have been a big step. But now, it’s a baby step,”

In 2017, Ivey’s office declined to answer questions on Ivey’s views on cannabis for NORML; “We have no statement on marijuana [nor] has the Governor made any statement on marijuana.”

It wouldn’t be accurate, however, to say that Alabama has made no progress on marijuana laws, even if Ivey declines to sign this latest piece of legislation. In April, the state’s most populated county decided to stop arresting people for nonviolent misdemeanors.

That news was particularly significant given findings that law enforcement disproportionately targets Black Alabamans for cannabis-related crimes.

Though the state lags behind many in its regulation of cannabis, its marijuana advocates are convinced that education is the key to progress. ”Any time that we’ve progressed it’s fear and ignorance, is what we have to overcome,” said Ball.

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Illinois cannabis advocates have been eagerly awaiting a recreational regulation bill forecasted by the governor and last night, they got the forward movement they craved. On Wednesday, the state’s Senate passed a bill legalizing a regulated cannabis industry, along with consumption, possession, and sale for residents 21 years and older.

The plan, which will now go to the House for approval, was part of Governor J.B. Pritzker’s campaign promises. At the start of the month, the politician told the press that he was deep into negotiations with other policy makers about the form that legalization would assume.

Unsurprisingly, Pritzker seemed thrilled to see the momentum gaining for his marijuana master plan. “Illinois is poised to become the first state in the nation that put equity and criminal justice reform at the heart of its approach to legalizing cannabis, and I’m grateful that the Senate has taken this important step with a bipartisan vote,” he tweeted after news went out of the senators’ affirmative decision.

Text of the bill contains instructions for a social equity program that will prioritize industry leadership by people from communities that have been negatively impacted by the War on Drugs. The bill also features language prioritizing pardons for people who were targeted by the War on Drugs, which was among the issues that raised red flags for Republicans regarding the legislation, but whose social justice aspect was a stated priority of Pritzker. Language around the issue was toned down to insure that it had the necessary number of votes to clear the Senate vote.

The governor’s office says that past offenses of up to 30 grams will be eligible for expungement, if the crimes were not associated with violence. The Prisoner Review Board will be recommending to the governor whether pardons should be issued. Those with past offenses that involve possession of quantities over 500 grams will require an official petition by the individual or their attorney.

The legislation would make it legal to possess 30 grams of flower, five grams of concentrate, or cannabis products containing 500 milligrams of THC. Separate limits are established for visitors who are not official state residents, like a 15 gram cap on flower possession.

Approval of the bill largely fell along party lines. Senator Jason Barickman was one of only three Republicans that okayed the measure, commenting that he thought the bill met “the primary role of government … to adopt safeguards to protect minors and safeguards to protect the public when an individual’s use puts others in harm’s way.” He also said that he saw marijuana use as “largely a personal choice.”

One issue that reportedly delayed the approval of the legislation was senators’ concerns over whether individuals should be allowed to grow cannabis in their homes — an issue that has seen very diverse resolution in the states that have thus far legalized recreational cannabis. In Illinois, the senators’ answer was to authorize five at-home plants for the state’s 65,000 medical marijuana patients, but not for recreational users.

That’s not the only notable restriction in the legislation. There would be a “zero tolerance” policy for marijuana in the workplace, and the Illinois State Police will be in charge of examining ways to institute DUI laws for cannabis users.

The post Illinois Senate Approves Adult-Use Marijuana Legalization Bill appeared first on High Times.

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A showdown between a Wisconsin Rastafarian church and law enforcement over the church’s right to distribute marijuana to its congregants reached a climax on Wednesday morning. Dane County Narcotics Task Force raided Lion of Judah House of Rastafari, arrested its two founders, and detained several people on site.

“We are practicing religious freedom,” said Jerry Sersch, one of the church’s maintenance workers who was present for the 8:30 a.m. raid. Sersch and his father Byron reported that police shone lasers in their faces with their weapons drawn, and that they were put into separate squad cars while officers shattered church windows and confiscated herb that the place of worship uses in its rites. “I thought I was going to get shot,” Jerry continued, as reported by the Wisconsin State Journal.

A neighbor told the Cap Times that some 30 officers were present for the raid.

“It’s just a church, man, [marijuana] is sacrament,” said the elder Sersch. “I don’t get it.”

Church co-founder Jesse Schworck was arrested in the raid, as was co-founder Dylan Paul Bangert when he arrived on the scene nearly three hours later.

The Lion of Judah House of Rastari opened its doors in March. Its website identifies it as “Wisconsin’s first & only lawful Rastafari cannabis sanctuary,” and organizers have told the media that 10,000 members joined its congregation in the first months of operation.

This is not the first time police had targeted the establishment. Officers had reportedly come by several times to confiscate marijuana and marijuana paraphernalia, and delivered the building’s owner a notice of public nuisance. “Even if you are a legitimate ‘church’, possessing and selling a Schedule 1 Controlled Substance, which these items are, is not legal under Wisconsin State Statute,” read that letter in part.

Schworck and Bangert filed a lawsuit against the city on April 18. “They know that they can’t come here,” Schwork told the Cap Times. “That’s why they don’t come here.”

But his words proved to be overconfident. In Wednesday’s raid, police commanded the Sersches to dismantle the small tent in which the formerly homeless men had been in living the church’s backyard so they could tow away Schwork’s car.

The church says that its marijuana supply was coming largely from its members. “We have the capacity to do all that,” Schworck said. “So we try to just have different people in different capacities depending on their church, their service. They do different things, they have different talents.”

Wisconsin is currently among 17 U.S. states that threaten criminal penalties for any amount of marijuana that is possessed, sold, or grown, although Madison has seen the passage of some decriminalization measures. Of the 3,903 arrests in Madison that took place based solely on marijuana possession between 2012 and 2015, 72 percent were Black individuals. Black people make up 39 percent of the city’s residents.

The state is far from the only place in the country that has seen conflict over Rastafarians’ right to use marijuana. In October, Patrick Beadle, a Rastafarian from Oregon was sentenced by an all-white Mississippi jury and sent to prison for eight years when police stopped his car for crossing a lane line — incidentally, an offense which the ACLU has identified as a “useful pretext” for racial profiling. Beadle’s sentence has since been reduced. Some incarcerated Rastafarians have sued the government over their right to use the drug while imprisoned.

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In a reminder that marijuana legalization does not legalize the production of all marijuana, Colorado police announced that they spent Wednesday morning busting a large swath of unauthorized cannabis production. Officers seized an almost unbelievable total of $240 million in marijuana plants and $13.5 million in market-ready cannabis, in addition to a Porsche, a BMV, and a Mercedes Benz from middle to upper class homes across the Denver suburbs.

A press release said that the operation yielded a total of 80,000 cannabis plants, which were confiscated from 41 houses in areas like Arvada, Thornton, Aurora, Castle Rock, Brighton, Parker, and Centennial, though raiding a total of 183 homes kept local law officers busy.

Denver7 reports that over 200 search warrants were involved — the same amount as had been filed during marijuana operations going back to legalization in 2014. That publication was unable to confirm if there had been arrests or which criminal charges have been filed in conjuncture with the investigation. The Denver Post reported that “dozens” of individuals were arrested during the operation.

The raids were apparently the product of a multi-year investigation into criminal enterprise that was shipping the finished cannabis over state lines. Wednesday’s operations were reportedly not the first time that Colorado police has busted growing operations uncovered during the operation.

“Unfortunately Colorado is no longer known for its beautiful mountains and scenery.” said District Attorney William T. McDermott in a Friday morning press conference regarding the raids. “Now it is known for marijuana and other illegal manufacturing and distribution of controlled substances. This investigation highlights that law enforcement and prosecutors are committed to the rule of law and ensuring Colorado returns to its former standing.”

Officials hinted at the fact that the raids would not be the end of prosecution of illegal grows in the state, which they claim is starting to affect local residents. “Colorado has become the epicenter of black market marijuana in the United States,” said U.S. Attorney Jason Dunn at the same conference. “It’s impacting communities, it’s impacting neighborhoods, and it’s impacting public safety. But this investigation may be just the tip of the iceberg.”

Given the number of high profile raids coming out of Colorado recently, these assertions seem to be correct in their diagnosis of a thriving extra-legal market based in the state. In January, DEA agents sacked 50 illegal grow houses in the Denver area. At that time, Colorado law enforcement had totaled seizures of 70,000 marijuana plants weighing in at over 10,000 pounds since the state legalized recreational cannabis. Authorities suggested that the groups implicated in the raids were involved in other illegal activities, such as trafficking of other substances and illegal gun sales.

In December, a local PBS affiliate found that serious marijuana felony charges have increased in Colorado since it legalized recreational cannabis. Charges including the cultivation of 30 or more plants, possession with intent to distribute and/or conspiracy involving more than 50 pounds had more than quadrupled since the first year that recreational marijuana was regulated in 2014.

A 2017 study done by Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Traffic Area identified Florida, Illinois, and Texas as the three states that receive the most amounts of illegal weed from Colorado growers.

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In what could be one of the most convincing financial arguments for the legalization of recreational marijuana yet, the state of Utah has announced that cannabis cultivators will face a licensing fee from between $75,000 to $100,000.

“The program has to be self-sufficient and pay for itself,” said Andrew Rigby, who is program manager for the state’s marijuana industry. Utah’s Department of Agriculture and Food, the cannabis industry’s regulatory body, has estimated that legalizing medical marijuana will cost the state over $563,000 in 2020. All the same, at the current fee rates, applications and licensing has been forecasted to bring in $1.1 million.

Regardless of the math, such high fees will certainly present a challenge to small marijuana businesses without a lot of capital with which to open up shop, and put the ball squarely in the court of larger or more monied firms.

“It could be a barrier for a few people,” Rigby allowed to Utah publication The Spectrum. In addition to the licensing fee, cannabis entrepreneurs will also be responsible for an application fee between $5,000 and $10,000.

Utah has seen its share of cannabis political turmoil since voters passed Proposition 2, which authorized medical marijuana. After the election, legislators took input from the Church of Latter Day Saints to re-draft the bill during a special session, resulting in a lawsuit from cannabis advocates against the state that the attorney general has requested be dismissed. But patient groups say that the new legislation is insufficient, and caution against inappropriate levels of influence from the Mormons over state affairs.

“Let’s go back to actual legislation and not theocracy,” said Doug Rice, president of the Epilepsy Association of Utah, one of the suit’s plaintiffs.

Though dispensaries won’t be opening until next year, Utah’s number one healthcare provider, Intermountain Healthcare, has already instructed its doctors that they will be able to recommend marijuana to qualified patients. Cannabis advocates had hoped that this announcement would encourage legislators to focus on the relief that marijuana provides patients, instead of the concerns of religious lobbying groups.

Compared to other southwestern states that have regulated marijuana previously, Utah’s are high figures. In Nevada, application fees run at $5,000 and growing facilities pay licensing fees of $3,000. Arizona charges a similar application fee, with an approval to operate fee available for $2,500. Granted, Nevada is able to recoup its program’s operating fees from taxes on the sale of recreational cannabis (see how that makes sense, now?)

Rigby countered such comparisons by pointing to Utah’s strict cap on marijuana businesses. At the moment, only 10 grow facilities will be able to operate in the state, so those 10 firms will be essentially taking on the program’s entire operating costs, which include staff hours and the purchase of equipment needed to oversee the industry.

“The math is very simple,” Rigby commented. “I think applicants will find that it is a fair price.”

Should you be in Utah and like to weigh in on these proposed program guidelines, there is a public hearing taking place at 350 N. Redwood Road in Salt Lake City at 5 p.m. on June 5.

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Another year, another federal marijuana decriminalization bill proposal? It’s starting to seem that way for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who has joined forces with New York representative Hakeem Jeffries on Schumer’s second decriminalization bill in two years.

“The Marijuana Freedom and Opportunity Act is a phenomenal step forward in terms of social, racial, and economic justice in the context of what many people view as the failed War on Drugs that has been with us for decades,” said Jeffries in a homey video that the men released on Friday as part of the bill’s announcement. They shot the clip in the neighborhood both men grew up in, at Brooklyn’s BRIC arts and culture center.

Central to the bill — which will be introduced in both houses by the dynamic duo — is the re-scheduling of cannabis so that the drug is no longer include on the federal list of controlled substances. That will allow states some wiggle room in crafting their own legislation around marijuana, and alleviate some of the worries of current cannabis providers and users that they could be subject to federal prosecution down the line for their connection to the plant.

It will also dictate a certain level of support for small entrepreneurs in any resulting legal industries. “Let’s not have some big fancy corporation, some big tobacco company make all the money,” says Schumer in the video. The bill will include coordination through the Small Business Administration to support new business owners who are women and/or people of color.

Given the wave of decriminalization measures that have recently passed across the country, timing makes sense for the introduction of the federal bill. Even in the South, certain states are making progress towards rejecting small time marijuana crime prosecution.

New Mexico’s governor passed decriminalization legislation last month. West Virginia voters will get a chance to vote on the issue, Alabama’s most populous county announced it would no longer prosecute marijuana misdemeanors, and up in New York state, prosecutors have dismissed possession warrants. In Texas, the House of Representatives approved a decriminalization bill last week, but the legislation was pronounced deceased when it reached the state’s Senate. (Dallas isn’t waiting around for state-level go-ahead, however; the city recently saw its own seismic shakeup in terms of misdemeanor prosecution.)

Though Senate Republicans, as ever, present a considerable obstacle to the passage of Jeffries and Schumer’s bill, it remains unclear that the president will be a problem in its passage. Trump — whose former aide just got going in the cannabis biz — signaled approval for Senator Cory Gardner’s cannabis legalization bill last year.

The pair of Brooklyn legislators remain hopeful that 2019 could be marijuana’s national decriminalization moment. Jeffries even sees the federal decriminalization bill as the natural next move after the First Step Act, another law that he co-sponsored and which was signed into effect by the president in April.

Of course, what the Marijuana Freedom and Opportunity Act does not do is legalize cannabis, instead allowing those decisions happen in state capitols across the country. “What we’re saying is very simple; let each state do what it wants,” summed up Schumer.

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http://bit.ly/2I68Fi3 May 11, 2019 at 11:16AM, 420GrowLife, KahliBuds

One more roadblock has been demolished that stood in the way of Michigan medical marijuana patients and reliable, safe access to cannabis treatment. On Wednesday, the Marijuana Regulatory Agency (which oversees both medical and recreational cannabis in the state) announced that patients can use their approval email from registering in the program to buy cannabis, rather than waiting for a physical registry card to be sent in the mail.

“A process that used to take several weeks now can be done in a single day,” commented MRA Executive Director Andrew Brisbo to Click On Detroit. “We are excited to offer this new online approval option for the state’s medical marijuana patients.”

Before the change, patients had to wait for their their registry card to arrive to begin buying medical marijuana. Even with a recently instituted online processing system, that often meant a lag in seven to 10 business days for them to be ready to go.

Now, patients are authorized to obtain medical cannabis at a licensed dispensary merely by heading over to the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA) website, uploading the appropriate documents, and presenting their confirmation email to a dispensary.

Michigan’s medical marijuana program has been in the process of expansion and improving access to the state’s patients ever since its first licensed dispensaries opened their doors in November of 2018 (the Michigan Medical Marijuana Program was approved in 2008, but lagged in providing access points for its participants.)

But the process of establishing the supply system has not been without its challenges. The amount of marijuana that is available for sale through authorized dispensaries — or provisioning centers, as they have been called in the state since a 2018 regulatory change up — has been outpaced by demand. It’s gotten to the point where a Court of Claims judge had to block a “drop-dead date” once again in March for unlicensed dispensaries due to concerns over patient access and affordability. Critics of the judicial block say that it will only extend patient access to marijuana that may not have been properly tested, and may contain fungus or other contaminants. At the beginning of the year, over 70 such unlicensed dispensaries were forced to shut down over such concerns.   

To address worries over access, this spring Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed an executive order that did away with the previous Medical Marijuana Licensing Board, opting instead for a (hopefully) more streamlined agency that would oversee medical and recreational cannabis industries called the Marijuana Regulatory Agency, to be overseen by LARA.

Despite such kerfuffles, the medical industry has managed to rack up $42 million in sales over its first four months. Such is the popularity and lucrativeness of the program that officials have considered lowering the registration fee that is required of patients.

The proposed registration fee changes were due to the fact that the medical marijuana program has turned out to be financially self-sustaining. “The revenue generated based on the current application fee for the past three years is approximately 90-100% more than (the department’s) operational expenses,” announced LARA in February.

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http://bit.ly/2I68Fi3 May 2, 2019 at 01:19AM, 420GrowLife, KahliBuds

Detroit may soon be home to a multi-million business project that aims to help correct damage done by racially biased cannabis policing. WXYZ Detroit reports that Green Cure Wellness and Southeast Provisioning’s new business complex will put priority on training local residents with prior marijuana convictions in the skills they need to take part in the state’s relatively new legal cannabis industry.

The project, located on Livernois Avenue on the west side of Detroit, will house five large-scale growing operations, two processing facilities, and a provisioning center in addition to the training program. The latter will be free of charge to individuals who were convicted of a marijuana-related offense in the days before legalization, and intends to provide skills in growing, budtending, processing, and cannabis entrepreneurship.

Such training programs address the immense pressure that has been put on Detroit’s communities of color by the War on Drugs. The Michigan State Police reported that in 2017, one out of every 12 people they arrested was charged with an offense related to marijuana, and the vast bulk of those were related to possession or consumption. Black men between the ages of 18 and 24 had arrest rates 10 times higher than white woman despite similar rates of usage.

Last year amid such reports of biased policing, 55 percent of Michigan voters approved Proposal 1, which approved the use of recreational marijuana by adults 21 years old and up. Of course, voters’ approbation was just the first step in undoing the injustice committed by selective cannabis prohibition enforcement. The bill did not include automatic expungements for those with cannabis crimes on their record, an omission that was criticized by criminal justice advocates at the time.

In the first four months after the opening of state-licensed medical marijuana dispensaries — at the end of which the state saw an expansion in qualifying conditions — $42 million in sales were reported. $18 million in medical marijuana tax revenue alone is predicted in 2019. That’s a big pie, and hopefully those whose lives have been adversely affected by the War on Drugs will get a slice.

Maurice Morton of the Morton Law Group, a former Chief of the special operations division on the Detroit police force, said that was one of the motivations behind the establishment of Green Cure Wellness and Southeast Provisioning.

“As a former prosecutor, many people have been surprised by my investment in the cannabis industry, but I refuse to sit back and watch as other build wealth and African Americans are left out,” Morton, a native Detroiter and one-time candidate for Congress, commented in a press release. “I want to help build opportunities for other people of color.”

The project is not the first large business complex that has been approved in the Detroit area. The Cannabis Property Brokers of Michigan announced that the Oakland Business Park broke ground in October. According to the Detroit News, the 288,000 square foot complex located one hour north of Detroit in the town of Orion plans to include space for “marijuana growers, processors, secure transporters and safety compliance tenants,” but not dispensaries, which are not permitted in the township in which it will be located.

The post Large-Scale Cannabis Business Park in Detroit Will Train Past Marijuana Offenders appeared first on High Times.

http://bit.ly/2I68Fi3 April 30, 2019 at 11:40PM, 420GrowLife, KahliBuds

If you needed any more proof that law enforcement agencies across the United States are going in on cannabis decriminalization, how’s this? On Monday, Alabama’s Jefferson County — where more people live than any other county in the state — announced that it not be making arrests for nonviolent misdemeanors anymore.

A driving force appears to the county’s determination to spend less resources persecuting those with small-time marijuana charges.

“I think this is going to help a lot of people and get a lot of people back on track,” said county sheriff Mark Pettway, who ran for the position with a campaign promising that he’d cut back on marijuana arrests. “Those who want help will be able to get help,”

“People are always talking about criminal justice reform,” sheriff spokesperson Capt. David Aggee said while announcing the shift in policy. “Well this is more than talk, this is action. This is big.'”

The state has been in the news a lot recently regarding the steps that it’s been taking towards changing the way that cannabis is dealt with by the law enforcement system. Alabama legislature also has a bill in front of it that would cut back punishments for possession of less than two ounces of cannabis, taking jail time off the table for those charged with such an offense. Those caught with more than two ounces, under the proposed legislation, would be subject to a fine up to $250 for their first offense. The bill would also establish a retroactive justice system that would allow people who have racked up possession charges for small amounts of marijuana to get their records expunged.

Representative Mike Ball, a Republican, has also filed bill HB 243 in March, also called the Compassion, Access, Research and Expansion (CARE) Act. It would expand Alabama’s medical marijuana program to a list of three dozen qualifying medical conditions — in addition to establishing a commission to oversee the program and provide licenses for cultivation, distribution, and sale. HB 243 has as one of its co-sponsors Rep. Mac McCutcheon, speaker of the Alabama House.

The decriminalization deliberations may well be a response to publicly voiced concerns over the current system of cannabis law. The mayor of Tuscaloosa Walt Maddox suggested that tickets rather than jail time be the result of low level marijuana possession arrests. “We need to deal with this in a different pattern besides throwing somebody in jail,” he said at a city council event in December. His words seem to portend policy shifts int he future for the town.

The lightening in penalties for such crimes is made all the more urgent by recent data showing that Black Alabamans are arrested at four times higher rates than whites for cannabis possession. Blacks were also shown to be five times more like to incur marijuana-related felonies than whites.
Alabama is not the only Southern state making surprising moves towards overhauling its criminal justice system. Dallas District Attorney John Creuzot recently announced sweeping changes to the city’s overcrowded jail infrastructure, including the decision that the large Texan city would cease to prosecute first-time marijuana misdemeanor cases.

The post Alabama’s Jefferson County Will No Longer Prosecute Marijuana Misdemeanors appeared first on High Times.

http://bit.ly/2I68Fi3 April 23, 2019 at 12:15PM, 420GrowLife, KahliBuds