March 23, 2020
Hemp must go on: UMaine to teach growers home cultivation
The University of Maine Cooperative Extension is going to help the state’s gardeners and home growers learn how to cultivate hemp at home. Maine's hemp business has been growing in recent years as federal restrictions have eased. The cooperative extension said it would use an online workshop on April 2 to teach residents how to grow at home. The workshop will include advice from John Jemison, an extension professor of soil and water quality. He will talk about best practices for growing hemp as well as offer instructions about how to harvest, dry, cure, and prepare it for personal use, the extension said.
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March 22, 2020
San Diego’s Cannabis Dispensaries Open for Business
Governor Newsom’s stay-at-home order has forced many businesses to shut down, but San Diego's cannabis dispensaries are all open for business as they have been deemed essential. The city's cannabis dispensaries are taking extra steps to keep their stores clean. “We are all wearing gloves around here. We're handling the cash. You have TVs everywhere telling you to stay 6 feet away from everybody,” said Christian Greenwood, a dispensary worker. “We are also doing routine with sanitary cleanings around the store.” On Thursday, the governor laid out specific rules on who is part of the essential workforce. Under the healthcare sector, cannabis retailers are on the list. “Right now, in a situation like this, a lot of people are using CBD for a release of anxiety, inflammation,” Greenwood said. “For the past few days, we've been getting a lot of business.” Over the last two years, the state of California has collected a billion dollars in cannabis tax revenue. Last fiscal year, San Diego collected more than $8 million in cannabis taxes, according to the Union-Tribune.
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Among the Los Angeles businesses deemed essential and urged to remain open are those with city permits to sell cannabis, authorities said Saturday. "Under the Mayor's 'Safer-at-Home' Order cannabis businesses are deemed essential and those with temporary approval are authorized to stay open in the City of Los Angeles," the city's Department of Cannabis Regulation said in a COVID-19 update. That means even cannabis dispensaries with temporary approval may have employees working at their facilities, the update said.
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New York lawmakers will likely have to take up marijuana legalization after the coronavirus threat it neutralized, a key senator told Marijuana Moment on Friday. While Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) has urged legislators to include legalization language in the annual budget, the pandemic has shifted legislative priorities. Sen. Liz Krueger (D), the sponsor of a recently revised reform bill, signaled earlier this week that the state’s need to respond to the public health crisis would mean that advancing legalization through the budget ahead of an April 1 deadline would not be achievable. In a new statement to Marijuana Moment, she said the legislature and governor “are deeply engaged in ensuring we quickly pass a budget that meets the immediate needs of our state as we face this crisis,” but cannabis reform may not make the cut. “Assembly [Majority Leader] Peoples-Stokes and I have put forward what I believe to be the best proposal to achieve marijuana legalization, and I would be happy to see the Governor include it in his budget,” she said. “However, while it is important that we end marijuana prohibition as soon as possible, it is also important that it be done the right way.” “If that cannot be achieved in the midst of a public health crisis, then we will all be better off waiting. There is no reason we cannot negotiate and pass a nation-leading legalization model when the crisis is over,” Krueger said. Cuomo, who has said the budget is the best vehicle to achieve legalization, also included the proposal in his spending plan last year. However, lawmakers could not agree on the specifics, with the question of how cannabis revenue would be spent being a key issue of contention. Drug policy reform efforts are taking a major hit amid the coronavirus outbreak. From California to Washington, D.C., activists are scrambling as they temporarily suspend traditional campaign activities while still hoping to collect enough signatures to qualify measures for the ballot. Psilocybin legalization activists in California are asking the government to allow electronic signatures for their initiative. Psychedelics decriminalization advocates in D.C. made a similar request. A campaign to legalize medical cannabis in Nebraska said on Thursday that the group is also pausing its efforts.
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The Maryland legislature approved a bill on Tuesday that would prevent almost 200,000 prior marijuana convictions from being viewed on a public database. The legislation, introduced by Del. David Moon (D), now heads to Gov. Larry Hogan’s (R) desk. If enacted, the bill would make it so convictions for cannabis possession that occurred prior to October 1, 2014 would not be viewable on the Maryland Judiciary Case Search. The proposal originally included a provision providing for automatic expungements, but that was removed in committee. Still, reform advocates celebrated the development and said expungements would be included in marijuana legalization legislation they will be pushing for in the next session. Separately, a bill to expand the state’s current decriminalization policy by increasing the possession threshold from 10 grams to one ounce is facing a time crunch. While the House of Delegates passed the measure last week, the coronavirus outbreak is prompting the legislature to adjourn on Wednesday. Advocates are imploring lawmakers to take it up before then. Otherwise, lawmakers are currently set to reconvene for a special session during the last week of May. On legalization, legislators have heard testimony on various bills to achieve comprehensive reform in the state for several sessions, but none have advanced to the House or Senate floor for votes. It’s not clear where the governor will come down on any of these various proposals. However, he has voiced support for medical cannabis legalization and said that adult-use reform is “worth taking a look at.”
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Cannabis may be legal in Vancouver but visitors looking to score are likely to run into a seemingly counterintuitive suggestion: try the black market. Recreational marijuana was legalised across Canada in October 2018. And yet on Reddit, the specialist forum website used by millions every day, many of Vancouver’s cannabis connoisseurs still swear by their underground supply. This is one of the major issues facing North America’s marijuana companies, which experts say are in the midst of a dotcom-style market crash. Canada and 11 US states have legalised recreational use of the drug, and a little over a year ago companies that cultivate and sell cannabis were seen by investors as one of the hottest tickets in town. Now billions of dollars have been wiped off the market values of the industry’s largest companies. The North American Marijuana Index, which tracks listed firms in the sector, has plummeted about 80% in the last year and is at its lowest value since 2016, before much legalisation had taken place.
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The head of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) again indicated that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) had an outsized influence on its proposed rules for hemp, stating that the agency “really didn’t like the whole program to begin with.” During a hearing on USDA’s budget before the Senate Appropriations Committee last week, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue was pressed on restrictive provisions of USDA’s interim final rule for hemp, specifically as it concerns the limited THC threshold allowed in the crop. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) said the 0.3 percent THC limit is arbitrary, and it’s not necessary to distinguish hemp from marijuana. Perdue said that was “certainly true” and he added that USDA “fought for a little more flexibility of widening those standards,” but it was constrained by congressionally approved statutes and faced pushback from other federal agencies as it attempted to loosen restrictions.“You may know also in the regulations, we had some pushback from DEA,” the secretary said, noting for the second time this month that the agency stood opposed to implementing a domestic hemp program in the first place. He previously called out DEA for its role in shaping restrictive rules for the newly legal crop in a House hearing. “We made a few modification as we were able to under the legal statutes in our interim final rule. This is a new and unusual crop, as you understand, and we’ll be very open to ongoing comments as we go forward about what those other flexibilities,” he said. “But our hands were constrained many times by the interagency process of other people weighing in.” Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) quickly followed up to say that he shares Merkley’s concerns and he urged Perdue to “continue working with us to get it right.” Later in the hearing, which was first reported by Hemp Industry Daily, Merkley again brought up hemp and asked the secretary whether it would be fair to characterize the interim final rule as a “draft plan” given the evolving nature of the regulations. He cited USDA’s recent decision to temporarily lift certain testing requirements as an example of that fluid approach. “I would think you would” be able to characterize it as a draft, Perdue replied. “The problem is, on an interim final rule, as our lawyers have explained to me, once it’s set, unless they’re minor changes in that, you can’t change it until you go to the notice of proposed rulemaking. I would functionally say it’s a draft plan.” “This is a very unique crop as you know. We were learning as we were going and we tried to nail it best we could,” he said. “We had some pushback as I indicated in other agencies, but I would think your characterization of a draft is a good one.”
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March 17, 2020
New York Lawmakers File Revised Marijuana Legalization Bill As Coronavirus Accelerates Budget
New York lawmakers have rolled out a revised bill to legalize marijuana as uncertainty abounds about the state legislative and budgetary process amid the coronavirus outbreak. The proposal filed on Thursday, which would allow individuals 21 and older to purchase cannabis from licensed retailers and cultivate up to six plants for personal use, has undergone several changes from prior versions as lawmakers continue negotiations. Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) included legalization in his budget proposal for the second year in a row, and he discussed the importance of passing the reform legislation in his State of the State address in January. The governor has repeatedly insisted that the budget should be the vehicle to enact reform, and this bill seems to position lawmakers to accomplish that ahead of an April deadline. However, advocates say complications may arise as the administration and legislature grapples with the ongoing crisis caused by the spread of coronavirus. “In an ideal world for advocates, language from the revised bill would be inserted into the budget before it arrives at Cuomo’s desk,” Melissa Moore, New York deputy state director of the Drug Policy Alliance, told Marijuana Moment. “But that prospect seems dimmed in light of the current crisis, which has shifted legislative priorities.” But even as officials work on the health response, Cuomo has insisted that pushing the reform move through the budget is still the surest way for it to succeed. And, because of the urgency of cutting down on public gatherings at a time when at least two state lawmakers have already tested positive for coronavirus, the budget may actually be considered on a “accelerated” basis with a deal being made as soon as this week. “We have to make the political decisions. The budget is the time to make the political decisions,” he said on a conference call with reporters on Saturday, adding that “without the budget, the easiest thing for a legislative body to do is to do nothing.”
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March 17, 2020
COVID-19 Social Distancing Guidelines Are Incompatible With Overpopulated U.S. Prisons
At a time when across the country, states are limiting gatherings of over 250 people and those who can are choosing to self-quarantine, there’s one place where millions of people are involuntarily gathered in close proximity — our nation’s prisons and immigrant detention centers. An epidemiologist at Brown University has recommended that the United States could release close to 44,000 detained immigrants who are being held for civil, not criminal, infractions. This would not only prevent the ability of COVID-19 to spread as quickly, but also save critical government resources at a time when we need every dollar we can get to fight the spread of the disease. Organizations like the ACLU and Critical Resistance are also calling for the release of high-risk populations like immigrants who are pregnant or over 60 years old from a GEO Group facility — the latest in a year of complaints against private prison companies from investors and activists alike concerned about immigrant detention. GEO Group released a statement on March 13 noting they do not have any coronavirus cases identified yet, and have action plans in place that include discussing with government officials the idea of reducing “non-essential” visitation. The question of the release of high-risk populations was not specifically referenced in the statement nor in a request for comment. Then more broadly, with over 2 million people incarcerated, and another 5 million under some form of correctional control, it’s a good time to address exactly why it is that America is infamous for locking up the greatest percentage of its citizens of any country on earth. It’s important to note that close to half of the federal prison population, 45.4%, to be exact. is currently there for drug violations. If we just look at cannabis — considered a recreational or medicinal plant in 33 states and DC, and a controlled substance in 17 states — there are 40,000 people across the country being held for possessing or distributing marijuana. In those 33 states, possessing 2.5 pounds of cannabis likely means you’re an entrepreneur, a healthcare provider, or simply the life of the party. In states like Louisiana, it could mean a 10-year prison sentence.
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March 17, 2020
Postal Service Fails To Properly Internally Mail Seized Marijuana Packages, Audit Reveals
Federal workers at the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) aren’t adhering to internal shipping guidelines after discovering illegal marijuana packages in the mail, and seized cannabis is being lost—or stolen—in the shuffle. The agency’s failure to take steps to cover up the plant’s pungent smell is a key reason. That’s according to a new audit from the USPS’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG), which analyzed the agency’s handling of suspected marijuana shipments. The report, released last week, shows that USPS lost more than 200 packages believed to contain cannabis in fiscal year 2019—and a big part of the problem seems to be that “postal inspectors did not use suggested mailing methods.” Tracking data indicates that 188 of the 15,941 confiscated packages were lost because “policy recommends, but does not require, postal inspectors to use a more controlled mailing method.” The report notes that packages with marijuana “emit a strong odor and can be easily detected,” contributing to the problem and increasing “the risk of theft by postal employees processing this mail.” “When packages suspected of containing illicit drugs are lost or stolen, there is an increased risk that those drugs could be illegally distributed or used,” it states. “In addition, when suspect packages which contain legitimate mailable items are sent to [government location redacted] and are lost, this could impact the Postal Service’s brand reputation.”
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