Government
Massachusetts Gov. Signs Marijuana Compromise Bill, But Strikes This Controversial Section
Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker signed into law a marijuana compromise bill addressing social equity and taxes. The Thursday move comes nearly six years after The Bay State legalized recreational cannabis use.
Senate Bill 3096 is aimed at advancing diversity in the sector and regulating the host community agreement (HCA) between cannabis companies and municipalities. It proposes allocating 15% of the money in the Marijuana Regulation Fund, which is fueled by the state’s cannabis excise tax, various operational fees, and industry penalties to a new Social Equity Trust Fund. The task of the new fund will be to provide grants and loans to people from communities most affected by the drug war who are now interested in joining the cannabis industry.
One part of the bill also offers guidelines on a process for cities to allow on-site marijuana consumption establishments or cannabis cafes.
According to Sonia Chang-Díaz, Senate chair of the Cannabis Policy Committee, the compromise bill “takes on some of the industry’s biggest issues.”
The Republican cover only removed one controversial section from the bill – the proposal to conduct a study on medical marijuana use in students during school days reported State House News. The American Academy of Pediatrics had already expressed its opposition to the proposed study on medical marijuana consumption in schools.
No Medical Marijuana In Schools
While Sen. Michael Rodrigues, Ways and Means committee chairman and lead Senate conferee, said earlier that the study could help students who would largely benefit from medical cannabis, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) didn’t agree.
“The AAP opposes medical marijuana outside the regulatory process of the US Food and Drug Administration,” an academy spokesperson told the Boston Herald.
The association of pediatricians says there is not enough data on proper dosing and side effects to make a decision.
“There are no research studies on the use of medical marijuana in teens, so actual indications, appropriate dosing, effects, and side effects are unknown. The only data available on medical marijuana in the pediatric population are limited to its use in children with severe refractory seizures,” the organization advised parents.
The governor agreed with the AAP on this proposition, deciding to leave it out of the marijuana compromise bill.
Baker said the measure as written “is highly prescriptive — making it clear that the agencies charged with producing the study must identify ways to make medical marijuana widely available within schools, rather than considering whether such an allowance is advisable.
The Republican cover only removed one controversial section from the bill – the proposal to conduct a study on medical marijuana use in students during school days reported State House News. The American Academy of Pediatrics had already expressed its opposition to the proposed study on medical marijuana consumption in schools.
No Medical Marijuana In Schools
While Sen. Michael Rodrigues, Ways and Means committee chairman and lead Senate conferee, said earlier that the study could help students who would largely benefit from medical cannabis, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) didn’t agree.
“The AAP opposes medical marijuana outside the regulatory process of the US Food and Drug Administration,” an academy spokesperson told the Boston Herald.
The association of pediatricians says there is not enough data on proper dosing and side effects to make a decision.
“There are no research studies on the use of medical marijuana in teens, so actual indications, appropriate dosing, effects, and side effects are unknown. The only data available on medical marijuana in the pediatric population are limited to its use in children with severe refractory seizures,” the organization advised parents.
The governor agreed with the AAP on this proposition, deciding to leave it out of the marijuana compromise bill.
Baker said the measure as written “is highly prescriptive — making it clear that the agencies charged with producing the study must identify ways to make medical marijuana widely available within schools, rather than considering whether such an allowance is advisable.
“The voter initiatives that legalized medical marijuana in 2012 and 2016 included strong measures to keep marijuana away from K-12 schools and school children. Both laws explicitly stated that marijuana would in no circumstance be permitted on school grounds,” the governor wrote in a letter to lawmakers. “Because the study proposed in section 26 clearly works against these important and well-established protections and disregards the clear intentions of the voters in legalizing marijuana use, I cannot approve this part of the bill.”
Monumental Step
At a Cannabis Control Commission meeting, several hours before the governor signed the bill, commissioner Ava Callender Concepcion urged her colleagues to take a minute to “recognize the significance of this moment and the magnitude of this impact. By no means am I saying that this single piece of legislation will solve every issue that’s facing the cannabis industry, but it is a massive step,” she said. “This is monumental.”
Chang-Díaz, commented, “This law will rebalance the playing field, where so far wealthy corporations have been able to buy their way through the licensing process and too many local, small business owners and Black and brown entrepreneurs have been locked out. The reforms and funding we fought so hard for will be game changers, putting Massachusetts back among the leading states for racial justice in our economic policy on cannabis. I’m so grateful to the many community members and grassroots leaders who came together and held the state’s feet to the fire to make this happen.”
Shanel Lindsay, a marijuana advocate who took part in the 2016 initiative petitions said that the governor and lawmakers “have made history with this vital — and overdue — grant and loan fund.
“This bill is an important step forward in undoing the harms of prohibition and over-policing and will provide an important path for families of color to create jobs in their community and generate generational wealth,” stated Lindsay, who is also co-founder of Equitable Opportunities Now.
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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