Business
Colombia Senators Approve Cannabis Legalization Bill
Colombia hopes to reduce organized crime behind the illicit market.
A bill to legalize cannabis in Colombia passed in the Senate on Tuesday. The primary focus of ending the war on cannabis is directly tied to halting organized crime, and illicit activities and addressing overpopulated prisons. Sen. María José Pizarro, the Senator behind the legislation, wrote in an op-ed last month that current cannabis prohibition “has enriched criminal organizations that continue to expand and sow terror around the world.”
“In parallel, a significant percentage of the increase in the population deprived of liberty worldwide corresponds to people arrested or prosecuted for possession and consumption, which has led to overcrowding and a prison crisis,” she added.
The constitutional amendment made its way through the Chamber of Representatives last month before passing in the Senate First Committee in a 15-4 vote. This signifies the seventh of eight votes required before the bill reaches Columbia’s progressive President Gustavo Petro’s desk. After its latest success, the legislation goes to the Senate floor, where voting should occur on June 16.
While Petro hasn’t given a direct quote on his view of the legislation, proponents of the bill are hopeful, as Petro has supported the legalization of the legislation since his inauguration in August, historically speaking up against the horror that can arise from prohibition, particularly the power it gives dangerous illicit markets.
Last year he addressed the UN to urge fellow nations to change their drug policy approach. The president often discusses the need to release people in prison for cannabis charges. Petro also discussed how a legal cannabis market could nurture Columbia’s economy. He noted that smaller towns, such as the Andes, could potentially enjoy a legal cannabis industry without licensing requirements. Petro is also open to creating an exportation business so Columbia can sell to other legal nations.
Because the bill is a proposed constitutional amendment, under Columbia law, it must make it through the entire legislative process in each chamber twice, in different calendar years, to finally pass and come into effect. If it passes, the amendment will support “the right of the free development of the personality, allowing citizens to decide on the consumption of cannabis in a regulated legal framework,” it reads. It also aims to reduce the “arbitrary discriminatory or unequal treatment in front of the population that consumes.” It would include treatment centers for those with substance use disorders and provide public education campaigns.
Another encouraging point Petro has brought up is the role cannabis could play in harm reduction by mitigating the demand for cocaine. The president, a former member of Colombia’s M-19 guerrilla group, has survived firsthand violent conflict between guerrilla soldiers, narco paramilitary groups, and drug cartels. So far, Columbia’s combative drug enforcement policies have only worsened the problem. Colombia continues to be a major cocaine exporter, according to the United Nations Office of Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). As Justice Minister Néstor Osuna vocalized at a public hearing in the Senate panel in 2022, Colombia has been the victim of “a failed war that was designed 50 years ago and, due to absurd prohibitionism, has brought us a lot of blood, armed conflict, mafias and crime.” Back in 2020, Columbian lawmakers introduced legislation to regulate coca and, thus, cocaine production while admitting that the country’s historical attempts to address the problem failed. However, the bill died thanks to a conservative legislature.
These problems are not unique to Columbia, and the president knows it. Last year, Petro met with Mexico’s president (the country is also considering cannabis legalization), and they announced efforts to unite Latin American leaders at an international conference focused on “redesigning and rethinking drug policy” given the “failure” of prohibition.
Source: https://hightimes.com/news/colombia-senators-approve-cannabis-legalization-bill/
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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