Government
Weed Legalization in Canada Not Linked to Increase in Car Crashes
But let’s talk about drunk driving.
Neither the legalization of adult-use cannabis nor the uptick in retail sales is correlated with an increase in car accidents, NORML reports. The data comes from a study published earlier this month in the Drug and Alcohol Review.
Canadian scientists looked at the number of traffic accidents in Toronto both in the years prior to and then directly after the city legalized adult-use cannabis.
According to their report: “[N]either the CCA [Canadian Cannabis Act] nor the NCS [number of cannabis stores per capita] is associated with concomitant changes in (traffic safety) outcomes. … During the first year of the CRUL’s [cannabis recreational use laws] implementation in Toronto, no significant changes in crashes, number of road victims and KSI [all road users killed or severely injured] were observed.”
In the U.S., the risk of increased car crashes due to stoned driving is often cited as a reason not to legalize adult-use cannabis. Throughout the years, various studies have reported conflicting information and led to different results depending on whom you ask and what their position on cannabis is. For example, a 2021 U.S. study suggested that auto accident rates rose in California, Colorado, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington, where recreational cannabis use and retail sales are legal, as Newsweek reported. However, if you read the entire article, you notice that at the end, it mentions that the study in question, which used information from injured drivers in emergency rooms in Denver, Colorado; Portland, Oregon; and Sacramento, California, only saw an increase in car accidents when cannabis was paired with alcohol.
According to the CDC, in 2020, 11,654 people were killed in motor vehicle crashes involving alcohol-impaired drivers, which accounted for 30% of all traffic-related deaths in the U.S. The annual estimated cost of car crash deaths involving alcohol-impaired drivers totaled about $123.3 billion in 2020, including the estimate for lives lost and medical bills. Not only is alcohol legal, but it’s not beholden to the same insane tax laws as cannabis, which, by strangling the legal market, only seem to allow the black market to flourish. The cannabis industry paid over $1.8 billion in additional taxes in 2022 alone.
The findings of the Toronto Drug and Alcohol Review study are consistent with other Canadian research. For instance, a 2021 study in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence “found no evidence that the implementation of the Cannabis Act [which legalized adult-use in Canada] was associated with significant changes in post-legalization patterns of all drivers’ traffic-injury ED [emergency department] visits or, more specifically, youth-driver traffic-injury ED presentations.” As NORML points out, another study published earlier this year similarly concluded, “Overall, there is no clear evidence that RCL [recreational cannabis laws] had any effect on rates of ED visits and hospitalizations for either motor vehicle or pedestrian/cyclist injury across Canada.”
However, in the U.S., insights into the correlation between cannabis legalization and traffic accidents tend to bend to meet Republicans’ regressive and scientifically unsound views. As Benzinga reports, regarding a 2023 bill meant to curb Connecticut’s legal market, State Senator Paul Cicarella (R), a ranking member of the Public Safety and Security Committee, told NBC Connecticut’s Mike Hydeck: “There’s not really a test that can determine when somebody is under the influence of the marijuana,” he said, adding that that the “false positive rate and false negative rate is so high that again, that might be a challenge to be admissible in court as well.”
The race is indeed on to create a THC breathalyzer. However, anti-cannabis lawmakers fail to grasp that people are already using cannabis, whether it’s legal or not. While cannabis is considered a generally safe substance, like any mind-altering drug, of course, one should consider safety measures such as driving and always using it responsibly. However, if the U.S. truly wants to focus on safety, its priority should be correcting tax laws and legalization on a Federal level because unless that happens, there won’t be a legal market to study.
Source: https://hightimes.com/news/weed-legalization-in-canada-not-linked-to-increase-in-car-crashes/
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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