The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced on Tuesday that is approved hemp regulatory plans for two additional states and three more Indian tribes. South Carolina and West Virginia are the latest to have their proposals approved since the crop was federally legalized under the 2018 Farm Bill. That raises the total number of approved state plans to 14. Last month, USDA accepted proposed regulations from Georgia and Montana. Additionally, the Oglala Sioux Tribe, the Seneca Nation of Indians and the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians also had their proposals authorized. Now there are 17 approved tribal plans. “USDA continues to receive and review hemp production plans from states and Indian tribes,” the department said. While USDA considers changes to an interim final rule for hemp that it released last year, it has systematically been approving plans submitted by states and tribes. Industry stakeholders have said they appreciate USDA’s commitment to continuing to implement a domestic hemp production program under the Farm Bill, but many have also raised concerns about restrictive provisions of the proposal. To that end, the department said in February that it will temporarily lift two provisions that the industry viewed as problematic. Those policies primarily concern testing and disposal requirements. The department declined to revise the THC limit, however, stating that it’s a statutory matter that can’t be dealt with administratively. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said twice last month that the Drug Enforcement Administration influenced certain rules, adding that the narcotics agency wasn’t pleased with the overall legalization of hemp. Separately, the Food and Drug Administration submitted an update last month on the status of its regulations for hemp-derived CBD. The agency said it is in the process of determining whether the cannabis compound can be marketed as a dietary supplement, and it’s still developing enforcement discretion guidance for cannabidiol. A public comment period was reopened indefinitely for individuals to submit feedback on the cannabis compound.
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The New York Legislature seems poised to eliminate a proposal to legalize marijuana through the budget this year, according to a draft document outlining the policies included in the spending legislation currently under final negotiations ahead of a vote this week. The draft budget report, which was shared with Marijuana Moment, includes a line stating that the “Adopted Budget omits the Executive proposal to legalize adult use cannabis.” It also “eliminates $34.31 million in funding for the Office for Cannabis Management,” a government body that would have been responsible for regulating the marijuana market. The apparent exclusion of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s legalization proposal, while disappointing to reform advocates, is not entirely surprising in the context of the coronavirus outbreak. While the governor repeatedly stressed that the policy change should be enacted through the budget, he and top lawmakers have tried to temper expectations in recent weeks as legislative priorities have shifted during the pandemic. But to some, the draft adopted budget report isn’t necessarily a death knell for the reform move, and they hope lawmakers can still accomplish legalization this year through separate legislation. “We are disappointed adult use is not in the budget since it would have been a huge economic benefit to New York farmers and small businesses,” said Allan Gandelman, president of the NY Cannabis Growers & Processors Association. “We hope to continue working with the governor and the legislature to get this done as soon as possible.” The Legislature must still vote on the final budget, but there’s little time left to hash out a deal on comprehensive reform ahead of a Wednesday deadline. Senator Liz Krueger filed a revised standalone legalization bill earlier this month, language of which could have theoretically been inserted into the budget, but it’s not clear that option remains on the table.
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A Massachusetts cannabis commissioner called on Governor Charlie Baker on Monday to allow recreational marijuana stores to reopen, deeming them an essential business alongside medical dispensaries amid the spread of coronavirus. Last week, Baker required all non-essential businesses in Massachusetts to close until at least April 7, but allowed medical dispensaries to stay open, saying they will be “treated for all intents and purposes the same way we treat healthcare operations.” He said he decided to close adult-use marijuana operations because they draw “a ton of traffic" from other nearby states. But cannabis Commissioner Shaleen Title said Monday that the same measures put in place to keep customers safe at medical dispensaries — like social distancing in line and enhanced sanitization efforts among employees — could be applied to adult-use stores. The commission has taken additional steps in the past couple weeks to cut down the in-person contact needed to obtain marijuana products in the state. The agency is temporarily allowing new medical marijuana patients to be certified via telehealth (rather than requiring in-person appointments) and allowing medical marijuana dispensaries to offer curbside or at-the-door pickup.
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March 30, 2020
Hemp farming approved to begin in Georgia this summer
Hemp farming has finally gotten the green light to begin in Georgia, bringing a new crop that will sprout this summer. Farmers will soon be able to grow hemp, which will then be processed into CBD oil, a popular product used for anxiety and sleeplessness. CBD oil is already sold in stores across Georgia, but it’s imported from other states.The prospects for the Georgia hemp industry to start this year were in doubt until the U.S. Department of Agriculture approved the state’s hemp plan this month. The federal government had put Georgia’s plan on hold late last year but gave it the go-ahead when state legislators appropriated $200,000 to regulate the program in this year’s budget and proposed additional funding next fiscal year.“With everything online and all systems go, our phones are ringing daily with farmers,” said Thomas Farmer, a co-founder of Second Century Ag, which plans to distribute hemp starter plants to farmers and then process grown hemp at a facility in Ocilla. “It’s a relief that it happened, without a doubt. We were looking forward to moving forward.” Hemp farmers and processors rushed to obtain licenses when state government began accepting applications last Monday. The Georgia Department of Agriculture received 57 applications for hemp farming licenses and five applications for hemp processing licenses in the first four days of the program.Hemp and marijuana both come from the cannabis plant, but hemp varieties contain little or no THC, the compound that gives marijuana users a high. State inspectors will test hemp to ensure it contains less than 0.3% THC.It will take at least 20 days for hemp licenses to be approved, and then farming can start.
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March 29, 2020
Adult-use cannabis shops seek ‘essential’ status
On a busy day, Caroline Frankel can see 500 to 700 people come through the door of her adult-use cannabis business. But Tuesday, Caroline’s Cannabis closed, deemed a non-essential business by Gov. Charlie Baker’s administration in efforts to contain the spread of the coronavirus. And Frankel is one of several people interviewed who is bracing for uncertainty in an already uncertain industry. “Look at how new and fragile this industry is,” Frankel, a social equity program participant, said in an interview Friday. She reported she had laid off one of her 10 staff members and the rest of the staff is on a leave of absence. “We work so devastatingly hard to be a part of it, to see the whole industry cease like this, I think we’re going to see some very serious financial effects trickle down from this.” It’s not just the little guy. “I got into this to provide cannabis safely and legally, and right now I am very limited in my ability to do that, and it is very upsetting and frustrating,” said Dr. Karen Munkacy, founder and CEO of Garden Remedies, which has three adult-use and medical cannabis locations in addition to a headquarters and a production facility. Medical cannabis is deemed an essential business, so Garden Remedies remains open, although a spokesperson said medical sales account for only 15% of revenue. “I have 150 jobs at risk because of what the governor has done, and we’re hoping that upon further evaluation he will do the right thing.”
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If there were any more fun facts to learn about cannabis, its ritualistic use at a biblical site in Israel can now be added to the list. In 1963, two limestone altars were found at the entrance to the "Holy of Holies" of a Judahite shrine at Beersheba Valley, in Israel's Tel Arad, an archaeological mound located west of the Dead Sea and surrounded by mountain ridges known as the Arad Plain. The site is divided into a lower city and an upper hill. Inside the site, there is a shrine devoted to Yahweh, the Hebrew name of God used in the Bible. Analysis of the materials on two altars, now housed in the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, found they contained cannabis and frankincense, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Tel Aviv.
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A group seeking a constitutional amendment to legalize recreational marijuana in Arkansas has stopped collecting signatures due to the coronavirus pandemic but will refocus its efforts for 2022, a spokeswoman said. Arkansas True Grass wanted an amendment to legalize marijuana use and expunge prior drug convictions on the Nov. 3 ballot. But the pandemic has led to the cancellation of events, making it all but impossible to collect the nearly 90,000 signatures required by the July 3 deadline, according to Briana Boling, the group’s spokeswoman.
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Utah’s medical cannabis pharmacies should remain open through the coronavirus pandemic, considered essential because they supply the plant-based treatments that patients rely upon, according to state health officials. The state’s first marijuana retailer is continuing to serve patients, although it is asking people not to walk into the Salt Lake City pharmacy without pre-registering. And a second cannabis pharmacy, Perfect Earth Modern Apothecary in North Logan, is scheduled to open April 1, albeit without the fanfare its owners had wanted. “People had hoped to have a big grand opening and something exciting they could offer patients and a tour,” said Desiree Hennessy, head of the Utah Patients Coalition. That’s all out the window, she said, now that the state is focused on weathering a pandemic. Wait times have lengthened at the state’s first cannabis pharmacy, Dragonfly Wellness on State Street, because the business is limiting the number of patients permitted inside at any one time, Hennessy said. Customers are supposed to stay in their cars until they get the all-clear. But she said those precautions are critical to protect vulnerable patients who are already suffering from the condition that qualified them for medical cannabis — ailments such as cancer, HIV or AIDS and multiple sclerosis. The state has issued more than 1,000 patient cards since its medical program launched early this month and is reviewing many more, according to the Utah Department of Health. Nearly 1,400 patients are waiting for their medical provider to sign off on their application, many times because they need an in-person appointment with their doctors, said Rich Oborn, director of the state’s Center for Medical Cannabis. The coronavirus outbreak has bogged down this part of the process, Hennessy said, because some doctors are limiting in-person visits and state law requires a physical appointment as part of registering for a patient card. To loosen the bottleneck created by this registration system, state lawmakers decided to let patients use letters of recommendation from their physicians to buy cannabis until the year’s end. The legal revisions, which took effect earlier this week, are meant to relieve the pressure on the application process and give patients a few months to secure their state-issued cannabis cards. Christine Stenquist, a cannabis advocate who’s been critical of the state’s program, said COVID-19 is only exacerbating weaknesses in the system and further restricting patients’ access to treatment. Her belief is that the state should legalize the home growing of cannabis so patients don’t have to depend on a handful of pharmacies to meet their needs.
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March 27, 2020
Cannabis finds its moment amid coronavirus outbreak
Cannabis is turning out to be the one thing the coronavirus can’t destroy. Marijuana sales are booming, with some states seeing 20 percent spikes in sales as anxious Americans prepare to be hunkered down in their homes potentially for months. Weed sellers are staffing up too, hiring laid-off workers from other industries to meet demand. And in the midst of a historic market meltdown, stock prices for cannabis companies have surged, in some cases doubling since the public health crisis began. “We are hiring because we are having to shift our business a bit,” said Kim Rivers, CEO of Trulieve, which is valued at $1 billion. The company is staffing up its delivery fleet, retail workers, and people to handle increased inventory shipments. “Now is a great time [to apply], particularly if you’re in a business that has seen layoffs.” Nearly all of the 33 states with legal medical or recreational markets have classified marijuana businesses as an essential service, allowing them to remain open even as vast swaths of the retail economy are shuttered. San Francisco and Denver initially announced plans to shut down dispensaries, but immediately backpedaled after a public furor. Weed shops are essentially being treated the same as pharmacies, reflecting a dramatic shift in cultural perceptions about the drug over the last decade. “It is a recognition that it has taken on much greater significance around the country,” said Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), a longtime Capitol Hill champion for cannabis. “This is something that makes a huge difference to the lives of hundreds of thousands of people every day. I do think that this might be part of a turning point.“ Concerns about whether smoking pot is the smartest response to a pandemic that’s causing severe lung injuries in tens of thousands of Americans have been largely drowned out. "Public opinion has pushed lawmakers to think about cannabis — and particularly medical cannabis — in different ways than they used to," said John Hudak, a cannabis policy expert at the Brookings Institution, and author of Marijuana: A Short History. "A lot of state policymakers are trying to get this right and they obviously see the risk of shutting down a dispensary to be higher than the rewards of shutting down a dispensary." Sales in Denver spiked by 120 percent on Monday when spooked residents believed shops were about to be shuttered, according to cannabis analytics firm Headset. Legendary California dispensary Harborside already hired 10 workers since the outbreak began. The stock prices of MedMen Enterprises and Tilray, two of the largest cannabis companies in North America, doubled over the last week.
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The federal Small Business Administration (SBA) is celebrating the potential of hemp and is urging federal regulators to address concerns from farmers before rules for the crop are finalized. At the same time, however, it is maintaining that it cannot service marijuana businesses due to ongoing federal prohibition. In a blog post published on Tuesday, SBA’s Office of Advocacy described the wide range of uses for hemp, including rope and CBD oil, and detailed the crop’s evolution from a federally controlled substance to an agricultural commodity that was legalized through the 2018 Farm Bill. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) now has jurisdiction over the plant, and it released an interim final rule last year outlining guidelines for a domestic hemp program. In the time since the crop’s legalization, SBA says it has “embarked on an ambitious and lengthy outreach effort to hear from small businesses” and heard feedback from farmers about how USDA’s proposed rules could impact their operations. “Advocacy staff were first introduced to the concerns that many other producers would later echo” during those outreach events, the post states. “Advocacy also learned about the concerns that educational institutions have with the program, and the wide reach the rule would have if left as-is without modification.” During a trip to a Virginia hemp farm, for example, the agency “learned about the various non-CBD uses for hemp, and that the rule as written would stifle the ability of small producers to grow for purposes other than manufacturing CBD products.” SBA also hosted its own forum on hemp issues in Pennsylvania “where concerns were raised about the length of time between testing and harvest, especially for those growers that do not use technology, such as Amish communities,” the agency reported. To address such issues, SBA was one of numerous organization to submit feedback on USDA’s interim final rule during a public comment period. In its letter, the agency identified several potentially problematic provisions of the proposed rule, including the THC testing window, maximum THC limit and restricted authorized testing methods.
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