Business
Report Projects Puerto Rican Recreational Cannabis Market Worth Over $500 Million
Puerto Rico could generate hundreds of millions of dollars in sales and about $80 million in tax revenue annually.
A pro cannabis trade group in Puerto Rico is hoping to advance the discussion of full recreational cannabis reform on the island. To this end, they have just released a report which predicts how recreational cannabis legalization might benefit the U.S. territory, located just southeast of Cuba. According to the analysis, the maturation of the industry here would take about five years and would take a trajectory seen in the development of the casino vertical, which developed here in the early decades of the twentieth century.
The island is not the only jurisdiction to consider this kind of economic development, particularly post-Pandemic. Nor is it the only popular tourist destination. This segment of the economy is, however, critically important to the island’s economy and has become increasingly so during the second decade of this century. It currently accounts for 10% of the total economy. Indeed, before COVID, much of the critical infrastructure was damaged thanks to Hurricane Maria and tourism was used to rebuild the island.
Beyond this, the island is no stranger to the production of other recreational commodities. This includes the world’s largest rum distillery, the Bacardi factory, located in Cataño. It is also increasingly a crypto firm haven. Because of Donald Trump, 98% of the land on the island is currently considered an “opportunity zone” designed specifically to bring foreign investors here.
Cannabis Reform in Puerto Rico
Cannabis has been illegal in Puerto Rico since 1932 when Act 12 specifically outlawed the same. Penalties for planting, importation, purchase, and sale of the plant ranged from a one month to one year in jail.
In 2013, right after the success of two American state referendums in Colorado and Washington State, Representative José Luis Báez proposed decriminalization. The Governor, Alejandro Garcia Padilla, signed medical cannabis reform two years later.
This reform includes allowing patients to have a 30-day supply of the drug, but not in smokeable form. Home grow remains illegal, and patients must purchase their meds through state-licensed dispensaries. There are an estimated 115,000 Puerto Rican patients.
The Legal Status of The Island
Puerto Rico is today an unincorporated U.S. territory. It is not a state. How U.S. federal law is interpreted here is also a hotly contested topic. According to what some consider highly racist decisions enshrined in Supreme Court case law and handed down in the early part of the last century, the island, along with the Philippines and Guam, are places where constitutional rights enjoyed within the continental U.S. and incorporated territories do not apply. Indeed, according to these legal precedents, the U.S. Constitution applies within the United States proper, the District of Columbia and “incorporated territories” while only the “fundamental limitations” apply in unincorporated ones.
What this means when it comes to things like the constitutional rights of states (see the earliest cannabis reform at the state level as a constitutional amendment at this level), cannabis is certainly in a very strange gray zone.
Displacement of Locals?
One of the tragic impacts of the last hurricane was that in its aftermath, residents were often forced to sell their homes and for a variety of reasons. This has led to investment banks buying large tracts of distressed real estate here over the past several years and locals being unable to afford to live here (or at least own property and sustain a decent standard of living). This has also led to local protests against foreign development, including the privatization of public resources, like beaches.
The development of a cannabis industry in this kind of environment may well prove profitable for foreign firms. How it would benefit the local population in terms of sustainable economic redevelopment is another matter.
New Mexico regulators fined a cannabis operator nearly $300,000 and revoked its license after the company allegedly created fake reports in the state’s traceability software.
The New Mexico Cannabis Control Division (CCD) accused marijuana manufacturer and retailer Golden Roots of 11 violations, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Golden Roots operates the The Cannabis Revolution Dispensary.
The majority of the violations are related to the Albuquerque company’s improper use of BioTrack, which has been New Mexico’s track-and-trace vendor since 2015.
The CCD alleges Golden Roots reported marijuana production only two months after it had received its vertically integrated license, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Because cannabis takes longer than two months to be cultivated, the CCD was suspicious of the report.
After inspecting the company’s premises, the CCD alleged Golden Roots reported cultivation, transportation and sales in BioTrack but wasn’t able to provide officers who inspected the site evidence that the operator was cultivating cannabis.
In April, the CCD revoked Golden Roots’ license and issued a $10,000 fine, according to the news outlet.
The company requested a hearing, which the regulator scheduled for Sept. 1.
At the hearing, the CCD testified that the company’s dried-cannabis weights in BioTrack were suspicious because they didn’t seem to accurately reflect how much weight marijuana loses as it dries.
Company employees also poorly accounted for why they were making adjustments in the system of up to 24 pounds of cannabis, making comments such as “bad” or “mistake” in the software, Albuquerque Business First reported.
Golden Roots was fined $298,972.05 – the amount regulators allege the company made selling products that weren’t properly accounted for in BioTrack.
The CCD has been cracking down on cannabis operators accused of selling products procured from out-of-state or not grown legally:
- Regulators alleged in August that Albuquerque dispensary Sawmill Sweet Leaf sold out-of-state products and didn’t have a license for extraction.
- Paradise Exotics Distro lost its license in July after regulators alleged the company sold products made in California.
Golden Roots was the first alleged rulebreaker in New Mexico to be asked to pay a large fine.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/new-mexico-cannabis-operator-fined-loses-license-for-alleged-biotrack-fraud/
Four marijuana companies, including a multistate operator, have filed a lawsuit against U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in which they allege the federal MJ prohibition under the Controlled Substances Act is no longer constitutional.
According to the complaint, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, retailer Canna Provisions, Treevit delivery service CEO Gyasi Sellers, cultivator Wiseacre Farm and MSO Verano Holdings Corp. are all harmed by “the federal government’s unconstitutional ban on cultivating, manufacturing, distributing, or possessing intrastate marijuana.”
Verano is headquartered in Chicago but has operations in Massachusetts; the other three operators are based in Massachusetts.
The lawsuit seeks a ruling that the “Controlled Substances Act is unconstitutional as applied to the intrastate cultivation, manufacture, possession, and distribution of marijuana pursuant to state law.”
The companies want the case to go before the U.S. Supreme Court.
They hired prominent law firm Boies Schiller Flexner to represent them.
The New York-based firm’s principal is David Boies, whose former clients include Microsoft, former presidential candidate Al Gore and Elizabeth Holmes’ disgraced startup Theranos.
Similar challenges to the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA) have failed.
One such challenge led to a landmark Supreme Court decision in 2005.
In Gonzalez vs. Raich, the highest court in the United States ruled in a 6-3 decision that the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution gave Congress the power to outlaw marijuana federally, even though state laws allow the cultivation and sale of cannabis.
In the 18 years since that ruling, 23 states and the District of Columbia have legalized adult-use marijuana and the federal government has allowed a multibillion-dollar cannabis industry to thrive.
Since both Congress and the U.S. Department of Justice, currently headed by Garland, have declined to intervene in state-licensed marijuana markets, the key facts that led to the Supreme Court’s 2005 ruling “no longer apply,” Boies said in a statement Thursday.
“The Supreme Court has since made clear that the federal government lacks the authority to regulate purely intrastate commerce,” Boies said.
“Moreover, the facts on which those precedents are based are no longer true.”
Verano President Darren Weiss said in a statement the company is “prepared to bring this case all the way to the Supreme Court in order to align federal law with how Congress has acted for years.”
While the Biden administration’s push to reschedule marijuana would help solve marijuana operators’ federal tax woes, neither rescheduling nor modest Congressional reforms such as the SAFER Banking Act “solve the fundamental issue,” Weiss added.
“The application of the CSA to lawful state-run cannabis business is an unconstitutional overreach on state sovereignty that has led to decades of harm, failed businesses, lost jobs, and unsafe working conditions.”
Alabama regulators are targeting Dec. 1 to award the first batch of medical cannabis business licenses after the agency’s first two attempts were scrapped because of scoring errors and litigation.
The first licenses will be awarded to individual cultivators, delivery providers, processors, dispensaries and state testing labs, according to the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission (AMCC).
Then, on Dec. 12, the AMCC will award licenses for vertically integrated operations, a designation set primarily for multistate operators.
Licenses are expected to be handed out 28 days after they have been awarded, so MMJ production could begin in early January, according to the Alabama Daily News.
That means MMJ products could be available for patients around early March, an AMCC spokesperson told the media outlet.
Regulators initially awarded 21 business licenses in June, only to void them after applicants alleged inconsistencies with how the applications were scored.
Then, in August, the state awarded 24 different licenses – 19 went to June recipients – only to reverse themselves again and scratch those licenses after spurned applicants filed lawsuits.
A state judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Chicago-based MSO Verano Holdings Corp., but another lawsuit is pending.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/alabama-plans-to-award-medical-cannabis-licenses-dec-1/
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