Government
House Bill 837 Aims to Legalize Pot Possession, Home Grow in Maryland
Activists behind a bid to legalize recreational cannabis in Maryland have launched a new ad campaign urging voters to support the proposal.
Activists behind a ballot referendum to legalize cannabis in Maryland launched a new ad campaign last week, urging voters to support the proposal when they go to the polls on November 8. If passed, the ballot measure would make Maryland the 20th state in the union to legalize recreational marijuana for adults.
In April, the Maryland General Assembly passed two bills designed to legalize recreational marijuana. Under the proposals, Maryland voters will decide in this fall’s general election if cannabis should be legalized for adults, leaving lawmakers to pass additional legislation to regulate the commercial cannabis industry.
“We’re at the beginning of an important process where we begin to look again at how we have treated the substance—cannabis,” Delegate Luke Clippinger, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee and the sponsor of the legislation, told his colleagues in the House of Delegates when they passed the bills earlier this year.
The legislation approved by lawmakers includes House Bill 837, a measure that would legalize possession of up to 1 1/2 ounces of marijuana for adults and create an equitable path to cannabis legalization, according to Clippinger. The bill would also allow adults to cultivate up to two cannabis plants at home.
Maryland Voters to Decide on Question 4 in November
House Bill 837 will go into effect if voters approve House Bill 1, a cannabis legalization constitutional amendment measure that will appear as Question 4 on the ballot for the November general election. The referendum is supported largely by Trulieve, a cannabis producer and retailer with operations in eight states, including three medical marijuana dispensaries in Maryland.
On Thursday, the campaign to pass Question 4 launched a new ad campaign featuring a website and video encouraging voters to support cannabis legalization in Maryland. Eugene Monroe, a former offensive lineman for the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens and the chairman of the committee sponsoring the referendum campaign, said the ballot measure would create economic opportunities for both entrepreneurs and workers.
“Legalizing cannabis would stimulate Maryland’s economy and create tens of thousands of good-paying jobs, while allowing Maryland residents to benefit from vital investments in education, public health, and public safety funded by cannabis taxes,” Monroe said in a statement quoted by the Washington Post.
Supporters of cannabis policy reform in the Maryland General Assembly have said that legalizing marijuana will help the state address the harms caused by prohibition and the War on Drugs. A study from the American Civil Liberties Union showed that between 2010 and 2018, Black people in Maryland were more than twice as likely to be arrested for a marijuana-related offense than white people, despite evidence that the two groups use cannabis at nearly equal rates.
“Passing Question 4 will put an end to the failed criminalization of cannabis, create a well-regulated legal marijuana market centered around equity, and open up new doors for local entrepreneurs and small business owners,” Monroe said in the statement.
Delegate Jazz Lewis of Prince George’s County, who gave his reluctant approval to the legislation passed earlier this year, said that the legal cannabis industry should be open to all.
“We need to make sure that we build a brand new industry where people can get in where it is most appropriate for them, and that they have a support system around them so that they can thrive,” said Lewis.
Maryland legalized medical marijuana in 2014, leading to the launch of the medicinal cannabis industry three years later. But not one of the businesses approved to operate in the industry was Black-owned. Delegate Gabriel Acevero, who represents part of Montgomery County, said that the recreational cannabis industry must not follow the same path.
“The Maryland General Assembly unfortunately got it wrong on medical cannabis,” said Acevero. “It did not prioritize equity, it did not ensure that – in an industry that now generates millions – that communities most impacted would be able to participate in that.”
“We’re not prioritizing mitigating the impacts of the racist drug war – we’re just moving on this issue because we recognize that it’s very popular with Marylanders and for some people, it’s politically expedient,” Acevero added. “But we have to get this right.”
Delegate David Moon, who represents a different section of Montgomery County, is the chair of the criminal justice impacts subcommittee of the cannabis legalization workgroup. He said that the group will wait until the referendum is passed and equity studies are completed early next year before drafting a regulatory system, noting that it could be years before recreational marijuana businesses open their doors to customers.
“That’s exactly why we’re on this sort of two step process,” Moon said. “This whole conversation about licensing requires a few more conversations and analysis, I think because of exactly the history [of the medical marijuana inequities.] The workgroup meetings that have happened have been about getting the basic conversations going on licensing and health effects, so I think it’s really a preview for what’s going to happen in next year’s legislative session.”
With 50 days before the election, Question 4 is receiving strong support from the public. In a poll of 748 likely voters released on Monday morning, 59% said they would vote in favor of the referendum.
Source: https://hightimes.com/news/house-bill-837-aims-to-legalize-pot-possession-home-grow-in-maryland/
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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