Georgia’s old voting computers will be moved to a government warehouse at the Port of Savannah, saving taxpayers about $432,000 a year in storage costs. U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg recently approved the agreement, which resolves concerns about the expense of preserving 30,000 voting touchscreens for an election security lawsuit. Plaintiffs in the case want to inspect the computers to find out whether they were infected by viruses or malware.The 18-year-old computers, which recorded votes electronically, were replaced this year by a voting system that uses new touchscreens and also prints out paper ballots.The Georgia Ports Authority will store the obsolete equipment, which would fill 48 semi-trailers, at no ongoing cost to the state. The government will pay to transport the computers from rented warehouses to the port.The secretary of state’s office had sought to destroy the computers as state agencies had to reduce spending by 10% in the current fiscal year, which began last week. But the June 25 court order denied the state’s request and required continued storage of the voting computers.Totenberg ordered state and county election officials to collect memory cards and work toward identifying a sample of voting machines for further examination.
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A planting machine crawled along the 100-acre Good Farm in Brant County, Ont. on a sunny June day, dropping seeds into the soil in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. Behind the wheel was an employee of 48North Cannabis Corp. one wouldn’t usually expect: chief executive Charles Vennat. “I joked with my team that I was the most expensive farmhand in southwestern Ontario,” said Vennat, who professes to keeping a pair of hiking boots in his car trunk for such impromptu jaunts. “I’ve always had the leadership philosophy that you should never ask anybody to do a job in your company that you would not want to do yourself.” Vennat, who visits the farm once a week during warm months, was at work on his company’s second crop of outdoor cannabis — a fairly new venture for licensed cannabis producers. While many pot producers started out with massive indoor facilities to prepare for the legalization of cannabis in Canada, a handful have turned to outdoor cultivation in order to take advantage of savings from free sunlight and lower electricity and staffing costs. Health Canada began handing out licenses to cultivate cannabis outside in 2019. Interest has since grown steadily.
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Los Angeles is revamping its rules for handing out licenses to cannabis businesses, amid anger and disappointment over the tumultuous rollout of a program meant to address the damage done by criminalizing marijuana. The rules passed unanimously Wednesday by the Los Angeles City Council tighten the criteria for new applicants seeking to qualify for the “social equity” program, which is supposed to ensure that people from communities hit hardest by the war on drugs benefit from marijuana legalization.
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Delta Cannabis opened in West Memphis, Ark. Wednesday. FOX13 was there as the first customers went through the door. It’s been nearly four years since Arkansas’ legislature passed the Medical Marijuana Amendment. West Memphians FOX13 spoke with said they are excited to have the medicine they need only a short drive from home.
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The House of Representatives approved legislation on Wednesday aimed at finally letting researchers study marijuana purchased from businesses in state-legal markets instead of only letting them use government-grown cannabis, as is the case under current law. The intent of the provision, tucked into a 2,000-plus-page infrastructure bill, is to allow the interstate distribution of such products even to scientists in jurisdictions that have not yet legalized marijuana.
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A marijuana decriminalization policy is officially in effect in Virginia as of Wednesday. One month after Gov. Ralph Northam (D) signed the bill—which will make possession of up to one ounce of cannabis punishable by a $25 fine with no threat of jail time and no criminal record—the commonwealth has become the 27th state to enact the policy change. Lawmakers initially passed the bill in March, but the governor recommended a series of amendments and sent the legislation back to the Senate and House of Delegates for consideration. While they adopted 15 of the Northam’s amendments, they rejected two, including one that proposed to delay a required study into the impact of broader cannabis legalization. The enactment of the legislation—HB 972 and SB 2—fulfills a campaign promise Northam made back in 2017. As governor, he has repeatedly stressed the need for reform, including in his State of the Commonwealth addresses. Prior Virginia law made simple possession punishable by a maximum $500 fine, up to 30 days in jail and a criminal record. Jenn Michelle Pedini, executive director of Virginia NORML, said that “Virginians have long opposed the criminalization of personal marijuana possession, and the enactment of this legislation turns that public opinion into public policy.” “Twenty-seven states have now decriminalized cannabis, and Virginia’s decriminalization law is the strongest among them,” Olivia Naugle, legislative analyst for the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), said in a press release. The law “will prevent Virginians from being criminalized and having their lives derailed for simple cannabis possession.” State Attorney General Mark Herring (D) also praised the reform. “Virginia’s approach to cannabis hasn’t been working for far too long, needlessly saddling Virginians, especially Black Virginians and people of color, with criminal records. Those days are now behind us,” he said in a press release. “With this historic legislation, we are making Virginia a more just, fair, equal and progressive place.” But Herring, who is running to replace the term-limited governor in 2021, wants the state to go even further. “While decriminalization is an important first step on Virginia’s path, we cannot stop until we have full legalization in the Commonwealth,” he said. Advocates also stressed that further reforms are needed. Pedini said that “it’s critical the legislature work swiftly to legalize and regulate the responsible use of cannabis by adults.” “For too long, young people, poor people, and people of color have disproportionately been impacted by cannabis criminalization, and lawmakers must take immediate steps to right these past wrongs and to undo the damage that prohibition has waged upon hundreds of thousands of Virginians,” the NORML activist said. Steve Hawkins, executive director of MPP said that “Virginia lawmakers should continue to work towards broader cannabis policy reform.” He cited a recent statement from the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus, which is pushing legislators to take up legalization during a special session this summer, as the right next step. “As the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus has recognized, full legalization is needed,” he said. “While decriminalization is long overdue, legalization is necessary to dramatically reduce police-civilian interactions and remove the pretext for countless police stops.” The Virginia Senate Democratic Caucus recently proposed a more modest reform that they want taken up during the August session: ending law enforcement searches of people or vehicles based solely on the odor of cannabis. The caucus also highlighted legislation the body passed last session but that didn’t make it to the governor’s desk that would have expunged certain prior marijuana charges and convictions.
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The most populous city in the most populous state in the country has for months fumbled its efforts to create an equitable cannabis industry. But that is poised to change. On Wednesday, the Los Angeles City Council voted in favor of sweeping changes to the cannabis industry, the most significant of which could allow the city to get back on track when it comes to equity efforts.
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July 1, 2020
Authorities Grapple With New Hemp Law Enforcement
Last September, I spoke on the importance of a whole-plant approach at the 2nd annual Southern Hemp Expo in Nashville, TN. But it’s not the whole-plant message I recall, rather it was the smokable hemp pre-rolls being handed out to attendees. This was the same in Las Vegas in December, and numerous other pre-COVID events around the country. Hemp biomass, whether that be hemp flowers, ground plant material, or so-called “marshmallows” (harvested hemp wrapped in plastic bales), looks, smells, and seems the same as marijuana, especially to law enforcement. Since the enactment of the 2014 Farm Bill, which defined “industrial hemp” and legalized domestic hemp production in the U.S. for the first time since the 1940s, it’s been incumbent upon law enforcement to recalibrate to say the least. Police departments, at all levels, and all across the country were unaware of the federal legalization of industrial hemp as the word simply did not get out. For some, this seems to still be the case. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) confounded matters further by taking steps directly in contravention of the 2014 Farm Bill by maintaining rhetoric that all cannabis, including industrial hemp, remained prohibited under federal law. This led to a lawsuit filed against the DEA by the Hemp Industries Association (HIA v. DEA III) for which I served as lead counsel. Simply put, there was no guidance to law enforcement on the heels of the 2014 Farm Bill, and the hemp plant continues to exist in a state of confusion at all levels across the country. This has impacted interstate transportation of lawfully grown hemp, the functioning of lawful hemp processing facilities, caused improper seizures of hemp materials and derivatives, and has stymied the development of the industrial hemp industry in the United States. In 2018, a district attorney in Tennessee and local Sheriff officials gave the green light to “Operation Candy Crush.” The sting ended with orders for 23 businesses to close their doors after officials claimed products with CBD contained illegal ingredients. A total of 17 store owners were also arrested. Following this enforcement action, these law enforcement officials held a press conference announcing their actions with pride. They were entirely unaware that the hemp materials - the products and derivatives - were wholly lawful under both federal and state law. Nonetheless, it was treated as though it was marijuana.
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June 30, 2020
This Cannabis Entrepreneur’s Message To New York On The Question Of Legalization Is, ‘What Are You Waiting For?’
Andrew Cuomo shored up a lot of political capital for his strong leadership during the worst of New York State’s Covid-19 crisis. Indeed, fully 87 percent of New Yorkers approved of Cuomo’s response, according to a Siena College Research Institute survey. So, how is Cuomo is going to take advantage of all those warm and fuzzy feelings among his constituents? Cannabis tech entrepreneur Howard Lee thinks now is the time to press for legalization. “My advice is, what are you waiting for?” Lee said during a free-ranging interview this week. “Many states have proven that they can do it legally, do it safely and provide a better product o their consumers. “How many times can you generate $300 million in tax revenue on a recurring basis now that’s still growing – in less than three or four years? What is New York waiting for?” In fact, New York needs the tax revenue badly due to its Covid losses –20,000-plus deaths and untold economic losses. So now’s the time to join the states that are legal (for both recreational and medical cannabis), which in FY 2019, according to a recent Tax Foundation report, chalked up impressive excise tax revenues. Examples: Washington State’s revenue gain was $390 million; California’s was $390 million; and Colorado’s was $251.8 million. The thing is to institute legalization correctly, and that means knocking out the illegal sellers, says Lee, who draws on his expertise as a former senior vice president at The Disney Company and now CEO of Seattle-based S?RSE Technology. S?RSE works with legal markets to implement its software, which helps companies to transform cannabis oil into a water-soluble emulsion for a consistent psychoactive effect and good taste in CBD- and THC-infused beverages and other edibles.Drawing on his experience working with legal markets in multiple states, Lee shares some definitive ideas on what future legal states should be doing (and here he focuses on New York because of the hard hit it took from the virus):
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June 30, 2020
How marijuana laws complicate scientists' search for crucial answers about cannabis, hemp
In the humid rooms of industrial-sized greenhouses on the outskirts of Geneva live hundreds of hemp plants of more than 60 varieties, a large part of Cornell University’s hemp breeding and genetics program. At Surge Laboratory, a short walk from the greenhouses, doctoral student Jacob Toth preps several test tubes for analysis. Their orange-hued broth contains genes responsible for making cannabinoids, the 100-plus chemicals found in the cannabis plant. In one particular test tube, Toth has an enzyme that usually makes CBC (cannabichromene) but that he thinks is mutated to now make the psychoactive cannabinoid THC. Through these genetic tests, Toth hopes to learn more about that small percentage of difference between the enzymes that make THC, CBD, and CBC, and what might be done to convert one into the other. Toth’s tests are just one part of the Cornell Hemp program, which was backed by $4 million from New York after the crop was legalized for research in 2014. Cornell Hemp’s team of 30 researchers face pressure to develop hemp varieties that will advance New York in the crop’s budding national market, which began three years ago under the 2018 Farm Bill. But Cornell’s researchers walk a thin line of legality and are restricted in scope by federal regulations governing the psychoactive chemical THC. Start with the wrong seeds or harvest at the wrong time and Cornell Hemp and the farmers it supports would be in trouble with the federal government for growing illegal marijuana. That’s because the difference between hemp and marijuana is not botanical, but regulatory. Federal law defines hemp as cannabis with less than 0.3% THC, while plants with more than 0.3% THC are considered marijuana and must be destroyed.
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