Government
Oklahoma Activists Submit Signatures for Recreational Pot Legalization Initiative
Cannabis activists in Oklahoma on Tuesday submitted more than 164,000 signatures in support of a ballot measure to legalize recreational weed.
Oklahoma activists met a significant milestone in their efforts to legalize recreational cannabis this week with the submission of more than 164,000 signatures on petitions to qualify an adult-use weed legalization ballot initiative for this year’s general election. Oklahomans for Sensible Marijuana Laws submitted the signatures for State Question 820 to the Secretary of State’s office at the state Capitol on Tuesday, nearly a month before the deadline to qualify for the November ballot.
If passed, State Question 820 would legalize cannabis for adults 21 and older. The statutory initiative would also task the state’s existing Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority with drafting and implementing regulations to govern the new adult-use cannabis industry.
Representatives of the campaign said that collecting signatures for the ballot measure was brisk throughout the state and polling data showed strong support for the initiative. Oklahomans for Sensible Marijuana Laws had until August 1 to submit 94,910 to qualify the measure for this year’s ballot, with Tuesday’s submission eclipsing that total by nearly 70,000 signatures.
“The overwhelming number of signatures we have received demonstrates that our campaign has the momentum and that Oklahomans are ready to vote to legalize recreational marijuana for adults,” campaign director Michelle Tilley in a statement quoted by The Journal Record.
Senior campaign adviser Ryan Kiesel said that he expects the initiative to be popular with voters when they go to the polls in November.
“We’re expecting Oklahomans to say yes to this,” he told local media.
Initiative Includes Expungement Provisions
State Question 820 also includes provisions to allow some people with past cannabis convictions to petition the courts to reverse their conviction and have their criminal record expunged. Campaign representatives believe that tens of thousands of people could benefit from having their records cleared under the cannabis legalization initiative.
“Oklahomans don’t think that people should be continually punished for something that’s no longer a crime,” Kiesel said.
State Question 820 would set a 15% tax on adult-use cannabis sales, more than twice the 7% tax rate levied on sales of medical cannabis. Taxes generated by the sale of recreational pot would be divided among the state’s General Revenue Fund, local governments that allow licensed adult-use cannabis businesses to operate in their jurisdiction, the state court system, school districts and drug treatment programs. Kiesel noted that legalizing recreational cannabis gives the state a new source of significant revenue.
“To be clear, medical marijuana was never really meant to be a revenue generator for the state, it’s about medicine,” Kiesel said. “When you move over to recreational, it is a revenue generator. The revenue that we’ve seen generated with medical marijuana, we anticipate will be even larger with recreational.”
While petitions supporting the measure received strong support in the state’s metropolitan areas, Kiesel noted that Question 820 was also popular with voters outside Tulsa and Oklahoma City.
“From Woodward to Ardmore and Broken Bow to Tulsa, our campaign has been everywhere,” Kiesel said. “We have been overwhelmed by the tremendous outpouring of support for State Question 820 and the momentum of our campaign. The massive number of signatures we collected means that Oklahoma voters are ready to take the next step in common-sense marijuana laws and make major investments in critical state services.”
Constitutional Amendment Initiative Would Also Legalize Recreational Pot in Oklahoma
A separate group, Oklahomans for Responsible Cannabis Action, is campaigning to pass a state constitutional initiative that would legalize recreational marijuana for adults. Because the measure, State Question 819, would amend the Oklahoma Constitution, the group was given 90 days to collect 177,957 signatures in favor of the initiative to qualify for the November ballot.
As a constitutional amendment, State Question 819 would be subject to only minor modifications of its provisions by the state legislature if passed, with more substantial changes requiring another vote of the people. State Question 820, however, is at risk of more significant changes by lawmakers because it is a statutory initiative.
Jed Green, director of Oklahomans for Responsible Cannabis Action, said that recreational pot legalization should be enshrined in the state constitution to protect it from being rolled back by a state legislature that has refused to legalize cannabis for use by adults.
“The problem we’ve got with the statutory measure in place is the legislature is applying the Oklahoma double standard to our businesses,” Green said. “They came in and, all of a sudden, jacked up a bunch of fees and threw a bunch of extra regulations on us.”
In 2018, Oklahomans legalized medical cannabis with the passage of State Question 788. Because that initiative is also a statutory measure, Oklahomans for Responsible Cannabis Action is also campaigning for passage of State Question 818, which would amend the state constitution to protect the legalization of medical cannabis. The group has until August 22 to collect signatures for both proposed initiatives.
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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