Government
Beach Bud: ‘Large Amount’ of Cannabis Washes Ashore in Florida
Police advised locals to avoid “turning this discovery into [a] treasure hunt.”
A Florida beach was the site of some mysterious, lost treasure over the weekend.
Police in Neptune Beach, a town in the northeastern corner of the state near Jacksonville, said on Saturday that officers “responded to a large amount of marijuana which washed ashore” earlier that morning.
“It appears a large quantity likely broke open at sea and separated before coming ashore,” the Neptune Beach Police Department said in a Facebook post. “Officers are on scene working with Public Works to clean the marijuana off the beach.”
The Facebook post included three photos, each showing a long trail of cannabis buds along the beach.
“Before anyone starts thinking about coming out and turning this discovery into your own treasure hunt, we would advise against it,” the police department said in the post.
The weed was apparently quite dank––and not in a good way.
“After floating in the ocean for some time, the marijuana has quickly begun to degrade and rot,” the cops said in the post.
Local news outlet Action News Jax reported late Saturday morning that officers “were on the scene working with Public Works to clean the marijuana off the beach,” and that the “scene is now clear.”
“There was a couple of cop cars down here parked on the street, just parked down there I guess picking up nugs of weed that washed up from the water,” an eyewitness told the station.
We’ve seen this movie before.
In 2018, law enforcement in St. John’s County, Florida reported that a number of packages of cannabis had been washing up on their shores, including one package that weighed 30 pounds.
“Most of those kinds of exchanges go on in the middle of the night,” Chuck Mulligan, the St. John’s County public information officer, said at the time. “There’s no telling where in the ocean this could have possibly occurred. It could have been off the coast of St. Johns County or it could have been somewhere in south Florida that drifted for days.”
“Being so close in proximity to Central and South America, we are many times a gateway to get [product] into the U.S.,” he added. “So it’s not uncommon for us to see this every once in a while, maybe once or twice a year in St. Johns County.”
Recreational cannabis is still against the law in the Sunshine State. Advocates are trying to change that, but have run into stiff opposition from some Florida officials.
Last month, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody filed a lawsuit with the state Supreme Court challenging a proposed 2024 ballot initiative to legalize recreational cannabis.
In her brief, Moody asserts that the initiative would allow “adults 21 years or older to possess, purchase, or use marijuana products and marijuana accessories” for recreational purposes.
Because cannabis remains illegal under federal law, Moody contends that makes the initiative “incorrect and misleading.”
The advocacy group pushing to get the initiative on next year’s ballot, Smart & Safe Florida, responded this month with its own brief filed to the Supreme Court.
“In the past several years, this Court has established a ‘roadmap’ for sponsors of marijuana-related ballot initiatives. In drafting the Initiative, SSF followed that clear roadmap. But the Attorney General and other opponents now argue that this court should abruptly redraw the map,” the group’s brief said. “The Attorney General’s lead argument is that this court should discard three of its recent precedents—precedents that it expressly encouraged ballot sponsors to use as blueprints for drafting future initiatives.”
Source: https://hightimes.com/news/beach-bud-large-amount-of-cannabis-washes-ashore-in-florida/
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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