Business
Denton, Texas Officials Reject Cannabis Decriminalization, Ignoring Will of Voters
Denton voters approved the measure last year.
In November, a huge majority of voters in Denton, Texas approved a measure decriminalizing low-level marijuana offenses. On Tuesday, leaders in the city defied those results.
By a margin of 4-3, the Denton city council voted “against adopting the ordinance that would have decriminalized marijuana,” CBS News Texas reported.
According to the station, more than “30 people spoke before the vote including several Denton police officers who say marijuana possession cases lead to searches which helps combat illegal guns and gang activity.”
“But supporters of marijuana use say it’s harmless and that there are legitimate and therapeutic applications for both clinical conditions and stresses of modern life,” the station reported.
Following the vote, the mayor of Denton “insisted that police officers still have the discretion not to cite or arrest for marijuana possession but advocates want more assurance they won’t be prosecuted,” according to CBS News Texas.
Tuesday’s vote marks a dramatic reversal of November’s election, when more than 70% of voters in Denton approved a proposed ordinance to decriminalize misdemeanor pot offenses.
The ordinance was placed on a ballot following a vote by the Denton city council last summer.
The Cross Timbers Gazette, a local newspaper, reported in November that under the new ordinance “Denton police officers will no longer write tickets or make arrests for possession of small amounts of pot and paraphernalia, and they’ll no longer stop and frisk people when they smell weed.”
The paper reported then that the “new ordinance will not apply when Denton police are investigating felony crimes, nor will it apply to state and federal agencies or to the Texas Woman’s University and University of North Texas jurisdictions.”
But there were early signs of cracks in the ordinance’s implementation.
In February, NBC DFW reported that Denton’s “city manager presented a report outlining reasons why the ordinance is challenging to implement” during a work session.
“I recognize the voters have spoken and I understand that, but we don’t have the authority to implement those because of state law and the conflicts,” the city manager, Sara Hensley, said at the time, as quoted by the news station.
In her report, Hensley contended that the new ordinance “is superseded by the ‘Texas Code of Criminal Procedure,’ which requires officers to enforce state law.”
“Texas cities and police departments are ‘prohibited from adopting a policy that does not fully enforce state and federal laws relating to drugs’ and ‘the city manager and chief of police cannot direct otherwise,’ according to the city,” the station reported.
“I do not have the authority to direct the police chief to not enforce the law,” Hensley said, according to NBC DFW.
Texas legislators have recently signaled a desire to change the state’s marijuana laws.
In March, the Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee voted 9-0 in favor of a bill that would decriminalize possession of small amounts of weed.
“I’ve been on a journey with this one. The essence of this bill is really simple even though the language may be a little bit confusing,” the bill’s sponsor, state House Rep. Joseph Moody said at a hearing in March. “There are tens of thousands of arrests for personal use possession in Texas annually and those cost our state hundreds of millions of dollars every single year, not to mention countless hours of law enforcement and prosecutor time. They also tag people, mostly young people, with criminal records that create life-long obstacles to jobs, education, housing and other opportunities. That’s an awful investment and an awful outcome any way you slice it.”
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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