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Delaware Senate Approves Cannabis Legalization Bills
The Delaware state Senate on Tuesday passed two bills to legalize marijuana for adults and establish a regulated market for adult-use cannabis.
The first measure, House Bill 1, which would legalize cannabis for adults, passed the Senate with a vote of 16-4, while House Bill 2, legislation to set up a framework for regulated recreational marijuana sales, was approved by a vote of 15-5. If they become law, the bills will make Delaware the 22nd state in the union to legalize adult-use cannabis.
The bills now head to the desk of Delaware Governor John Carney, who last year vetoed legislation to legalize adult-use cannabis, making him the only Democratic governor in the nation to make such a move. The state House of Representatives then failed to override the veto, leaving lawmakers to try again during the current legislative session. This year, however, both houses of the Delaware legislature have passed the bills with a veto-proof majority, making final passage of the bills with or without Carney’s signature all but guaranteed.
Cannabis Policy Reform Marches Forward
The neighboring states of New Jersey and Maryland have also passed legislation to legalize cannabis for use by adults, making Delaware one of the few holdouts in the Northeast left to end the prohibition of marijuana. After Tuesday’s Senate votes to legalize the bills, Brian Vicente, founding partner at the cannabis and psychedelics law firm Vicente LLP, hailed the new progress for the cannabis policy reform movement in the United States.
“The impending passage of legalization in Delaware is a historic and important step towards establishing the Atlantic Seaboard as ground for legal adult cannabis regulation,” Vicente wrote in an email to High Times. “For many years, legalization was considered a West Coast phenomenon, but the East Coast is now following suit. While we are still a ways away from having cannabis legal from Florida to Maine, Delaware further cements the East Coast as an area turning its back on marijuana prohibition.”
Neither of the bills passed on Tuesday, however, include restorative justice provisions to expunge past convictions for cannabis-related offenses like those included in the marijuana legalization plans of many states in recent years. Natalie Papillion, chief operating officer of the Last Prisoner Project, a nonprofit group dedicated to the release of all cannabis prisoners, called out the lack of expungement measures in Delaware’s marijuana legalization plan.
“Legalization alone cannot heal the wounds of prohibition. True justice demands legislation that provides record clearance and resentencing for those affected,” she wrote in a statement to High Times. “It’s disheartening that Delaware has ignored the opportunity to start repairing these harms by failing to incorporate retroactive relief measures into this bill.”
Legalization Has Broad Public Support in Delaware
Polling in Delaware shows that nearly three-quarters of adults in the state support legalizing marijuana, while only 18% said that cannabis should remain illegal. Nearly nine out of 10 Democratic respondents said they approve of cannabis legalization, while 73% of independent voters also said they support ending the prohibition of marijuana in the state. Less than half (47%) of Republicans said cannabis should continue to be against the law, while 42% of GOP respondents support legalization.
“With this latest vote, the fight to legalize cannabis in Delaware is nearing the finish line. Cannabis policy reform has garnered widespread support among Delawareans for years. Meanwhile, neighboring states have already made the move to legalize cannabis,” Olivia Naugle, senior policy analyst at the Marijuana Policy Project, said in a statement from the cannabis reform group. “It’s encouraging to see the legislature advance these bills with veto-proof majorities. We hope Gov. Carney will heed the will of the people and allow Delaware to become the 22nd state to legalize cannabis. Any further delay to cannabis legalization would be a detriment to the state.”
Attorney Vicente said that the legalization of cannabis in Delaware could also give additional support to the effort to legalize cannabis at the federal level, noting that state lawmakers are increasingly in favor of reform.
“Importantly, after this law passes, Delaware will send two U.S. Senators and one House member to Washington, D.C., with a clear mandate to pass federal reform,” he said. “Delaware is an example of a relatively new trend in cannabis reform, with its adult-use law passing through its legislature instead of by a popular vote.”
The legislation now heads to the governor’s desk for his consideration. Before Tuesday’s vote in the Senate, Carney spokeswoman Emily Hershman said in a statement that the governor “continues to have strong concerns about the unintended consequences of legalizing marijuana for recreational use in our state, especially about the impacts on our young people and highway safety.”
“He knows others have honest disagreements on this issue,” she added. “But we don’t have anything new to share today about how the Governor will act on HB 1 and HB 2 if they reach his desk.”
Source: https://hightimes.com/news/delaware-senate-approves-cannabis-legalization-bills/
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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