Business
Shroom Shop Raided in Ontario, Canada
Another FunGuyz location in Canada was raided, and shroom store operators don’t plan on shutting down business.
Another location of a psilocybin mushroom dispensary chain in Canada was raided by police, about a month after its earlier location was raided. Psilocybin advocates in Canada remain undeterred however, with no plans to back down.
CTV News in London reports that on Aug. 17, St. Thomas Police Service (STPS) officers in Ontario in Canada executed a warrant on the FunGuyz (pronounced fungi’s) magic mushroom shop. It was not their first rodeo with law enforcement raids.
STPS released a press release on Aug. 18. “A 39-year-old London resident has been arrested after a swift response from the St. Thomas Police Service (STPS) regarding community concerns about the open sale of psilocybin, commonly known as magic mushrooms, at a newly opened business in the city.”
The store sold products like psilocybin-infused edibles and microdoses of mushrooms. At other FunGuyz locations, for instance, shrooms were sold in 7-, 14-, or 28-gram bags of dried mushrooms labeled by the strains Golden Teachers, Blue Meanies, African Pyramid, Amazonian, Penis Envy, and so on. Microdose psilocybin options for most of the strains of shrooms are available as well in 50, 100, or 200 micrograms. They also sell psilocybin-infused gummies, chocolate, tea, and other products.
“Our street crimes unit did arrest a 39-year-old London resident with possession of a controlled substance for trafficking purposes,” said STPS Corporate Communications Director Samantha Wakefield. “The individual was an employee of the establishment here.”
STPS officers said neighborhood community members raised concerns, however the police were already aware of the operation.
Local reports indicate that FunGuyz locations have played cat and mouse with law enforcement, frequently reopening for business. It’s the second location in two months to be targeted. Police at the St. Thomas raid identified various strains of mushrooms inside the store and seized 7,150 grams of psilocybin with an estimated street value of $71,504.
The owner, who wished to remain anonymous, told CTV News, “We like charges because we’re just going to do a constitutional challenge with everyone that gets charged.”
FunGuyz vs. Canadian Police
Locations in other provinces also face closure thanks to ongoing law enforcement actions. A FunGuyz location in Montreal, Quebec was raided by police last July.
CTV News reported that several police officers descended on the FunGuyz shop hours after the company opened their first location in the province of Quebec in Montreal’s Sainte-Marie district. The shop was raided during its opening day, so day one of sales was likely not a secret. Four people were arrested, police say, and their investigation into the shroom dispensary is ongoing.
“We’re just getting started and we hope that the word gets out,” Edgar Gorbans told CTV News Windsor. As of July, FunGuyz runs 11 other stores in Ontario, plans to open more in Quebec, and has locations close to Detroit, Michigan.
“We’re dealing with people in active addiction who have very little in the way of impulse control, have very little in their ability to say no,” said Director Don Trepanier. “When we have uncontrolled access to these substances, then it becomes a problem.”
The Transformation of Psilocybin in Canada
Psilocybin is prohibited in Canada under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (CDSA). The drug has been an illegal controlled substance since 1975. Despite the status of psilocybin, the government concedes that medical properties probably do exist.
Canada’s former health minister used her authority to grant a limited number of legal exemptions for psilocybin, but that was mainly only given to people with terminal illness and treatment-resistant depression.
“There is increasing interest in the potential therapeutic uses of magic mushrooms and of psilocybin, one of the active ingredients in magic mushrooms,” the Government of Canada states. “While clinical trials with psilocybin have shown promising results, at this time, there are no approved therapeutic products containing psilocybin in Canada or elsewhere. Clinical trials are the most appropriate and effective way to advance research with unapproved drugs such as psilocybin while protecting the health and safety of patients.”
The production, sale, and possession of psilocybin remains illegal in Canada. There are over 200 species of psilocybin mushrooms, and officials don’t want people taking the risk into their own hands, given that similar varieties are potentially poisonous.
Store operators, however, often don’t care and commonly open up shop in broad daylight anyways. Advocates in Canada have been pushing the envelope with psilocybin dispensaries operating in the gray area. Canadian advocate Dana Larsen, for instance, opened up an online psilocybin dispensary and storefront locations, four in Vancouver at one point.
Psilocybin mushrooms are being studied for the treatment of depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, trauma, alcoholism, irritable bowel syndrome, and other medical conditions. There are efforts to decriminalize psilocybin and other psychedelics in Colorado, Washington, Massachusetts, and cities throughout California. Many people visit the dispensaries to get microdoses to treat various conditions.
Source: https://hightimes.com/psychedelics/shroom-shop-raided-in-ontario-canada/
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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