June 24, 2020
Why more states could legalize cannabis in 2021
Amid recession and social unrest, the cannabis industry sees its moment. Actions by states to reduce criminal penalties for marijuana use and possession are fueling momentum for the broader movement to legalize cannabis and have it serve as an economic engine for cash-strapped coffers, industry members and policy experts say. "I expect a record number of states to legalize marijuana in 2021, in part due to the financial pressures, along with the racial injustice imperative to reduce unnecessary police-civilian interactions," said Karen O'Keefe, director of state policies for the Marijuana Policy Project, the lobbying organization behind many state cannabis policies in place today. In recent weeks, a spate of US states have sought to relax decades-old drug laws that criminalized cannabis use and possession and disproportionately jailed Black people for non-violent offenses. Nevada pardoned more than 15,500 people who were convicted of carrying less than an ounce of cannabis. Georgia lawmakers added decriminalization to a police reform bill that faces a challenging path to approval, considering that state's Republican-controlled General Assembly and that the legislative session ends on June 30, the Savannah Morning News reports. Decriminalization legislation also is advancing in New Jersey. In Colorado, a bill aimed at diversifying the state's legal cannabis industry was amended with a provision that would allow Democratic Governor Jared Polis to expunge residents' low-level cannabis convictions. Virginia's new decriminalization law also includes provisions to create a work group to evaluate the potential impact of cannabis legalization. In recent years, the calls have grown for firmer policies addressing social justice and social equity concerns by reducing the number of people imprisoned for non-violent cannabis offenses, directing tax revenue to communities harmed by Drug War policies, and increasing the number of minority business owners and employees. "Equity is something that should not be an afterthought," said Amber Littlejohn, senior policy adviser at the Minority Cannabis Business Association. Even Kevin Sabet, co-founder of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, which opposes full-scale cannabis legalization, told CNN Business the organization is supportive of recent efforts to decriminalize minor possession of cannabis. "Decriminalization begins the process of healing past harms while also forgoing the creation of a new, predatory industry keen on marketing extremely potent marijuana products," he said via email.
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June 24, 2020
How Congress passed a farm bill and left Maryland police labs unable to test for marijuana
As director of Baltimore’s crime lab, Chief Steven O’Dell paid no mind to the farm bill before Congress in late 2018. Neither did Rachel Lucas, who runs the Baltimore County police lab. The bill was supposed to set policy for agriculture, not evidence. More than a year later, however, lab directors such as O’Dell and Lucas are still dealing with the far-reaching and expensive implications of the legislation. It made their instruments for routine lab tests of suspected marijuana suddenly obsolete. The issue is that the farm bill legalized the agricultural production of hemp — which contains trace amounts of a substance found in marijuana — and removed hemp from the government lists of controlled substances. The legislation defined hemp as any part of the plant containing 0.3% or less THC, the famous psychoactive ingredient in marijuana. Marijuana has far more THC than that. But current police department equipment only detects the presence of THC, not the quantity. And simply finding the presence of THC was no longer enough to identify marijuana. In the busy Baltimore lab, marijuana testing ground to a halt. “Nobody was prepared. You don’t look for these changes to your laws in farm bills,” O’Dell said. Such work stopped in Baltimore County, too. “What you needed was quantitation, and that’s the part nobody had,” said Lucas. The new law caused Baltimore Police Commissioner Michael Harrison to tell the City Council this month that he plans to spend a state technology grant of $245,000 on new equipment to test for marijuana. Though Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby has said she won’t prosecute for simple possession of marijuana, the city lab remained busy until last summer, when state legislation stemming from the farm bill took effect in Maryland. Workers had tested samples for federal agents, for local drug distribution cases, even for campus police such as those at Morgan State University and the University of Baltimore. The hemp law has brought labs and lawmakers a lesson in unintended consequences. “No, we didn’t talk about this. It just didn’t come up at all, not with all the experts in the room and all the testimony,” said Del. David Fraser-Hidalgo, the Montgomery County Democrat who sponsored the state bill.
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June 24, 2020
DOJ whistleblower to testify that Barr's personal anti-marijuana sentiment fueled cannabis industry investigations
A Department of Justice whistleblower is expected to testify on Wednesday that Attorney General Bill Barr improperly went after cannabis suppliers because of his personal feelings about the industry. According to testimony released on Tuesday, John Elias, a career department employee, will highlight Barr's perceived motivations behind the department's multiple investigations into mergers in the cannabis industry. He asserts that 29% of the Antitrust Division's merger probes targeted the cannabis industry, citing Barr's explanation for pursuing one such investigation in March 2019. "Rejecting the analysis of career staff, Attorney General Barr ordered the Antitrust Division to issue Second Request subpoenas," Elias said, referencing the division's most comprehensive type of merger probe. "The rationale for doing so centered not on an antitrust analysis, but because he did not like the nature of their underlying business." Taken together, the accounts from Elias and Mueller team lawyer Aaron Zelinsky -- who will also appear Wednesday, to testify that longtime adviser Roger Stone was "treated differently from any other defendant because of his relationship to the President" -- tell a consistent story of notable political abuse across the Justice Department. The two accounts reinforce each other, despite coming from two separate Department of Justice teams overseen by different political appointees. Elias also suggests that multiple people in the division were aware of Barr's anti-cannabis inclinations, and that in many cases the mergers were documented by department staff as appearing "unlikely to raise significant competitive concerns." During an all-staff meeting in September 2019, Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim, the head of the Antitrust Division, "acknowledged that the investigations were motivated by the fact that the cannabis industry is unpopular 'on the fifth floor,' a reference to Attorney General Barr's offices in the DOJ headquarters building," Elias wrote. "Personal dislike of the industry is not a proper basis upon which to ground an antitrust investigation." Elias' testimony also asserts that the Justice Department launched an anti-trust probe in August 2019 after President Donald Trump tweeted his anger over a deal struck between automakers and California to comply with stricter emissions standards despite the Trump administration's plans to roll back the rules.
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A Georgia measure setting up licenses for hemp producers and processors awaits the governor’s signature. State lawmakers approved legislation that would require a license for possessing hemp, whether it’s cultivating, transporting, or selling the plant. Licenses wouldn’t be required to possess finished hemp products. The bill approved Monday now heads to Gov. Brian Kemp for his signature, the Savannah Morning News reported. Anyone who has hemp without a license would face the same penalties as marijuana possession in Georgia, including jail time and fines. Background checks and fingerprinting would also be required of owners or executives of hemp growing or research operations. Hemp processors would need to pay a $25,000 permit fee to the state Department of Agriculture on the first year and $50,000 every subsequent year. One of the bill’s aims is to clear up confusion during traffic stops when an officer needs to distinguish between hemp and marijuana, which can look and smell identical. With paperwork, officers can avoid having to test a plant for THC.
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The city of Naperville is reconsidering whether or not to allow the sale of recreational marijuana.
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June 23, 2020
As Des Moines studies decriminalization, here's what you should know about marijuana laws in Iowa
Recreational use of marijuana is illegal in Iowa and under federal law, but Des Moines officials on Monday took steps to make marijuana possession law enforcement's lowest priority.
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June 23, 2020
The Cybersecurity 202: Democratic election officials punch back on Trump mail voting claims
Democratic election officials are punching back at President Trump's unfounded claims that voting by mail leads to widespread fraud.
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Georgia experienced major problems with its voting processes during a primary election earlier in June. People waited in line up to eight hours to cast ballots, and poll workers struggled with new machines on which they hadn’t been trained due to the pandemic.
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June 23, 2020
Election chaos renews focus on gutted Voting Rights Act
When some Georgia voters endured a pandemic, pouring rain and massive waits earlier this month to cast their ballot, President Donald Trump and other Republicans blamed local Democrats for presiding over chaos.
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June 22, 2020
Feds Expose Religious Discrimination Against Marijuana Consumers In Other Countries While Ignoring U.S. Policy
The U.S. State Department has again made clear that religious discrimination against marijuana consumers is a problem in other countries—though it also once more declined to mention that such discrimination inherently occurs in the U.S. due to ongoing federal prohibition. In its latest annual Report on International Religious Freedom, the department identified about a dozen countries and territories where cannabis policies either discriminate against consumers or where marijuana laws have been reformed to better respect religious liberties. The document shows similar themes as in past years. “I’m here one more time, proudly, to talk about freedom and free societies. And while America is not a perfect nation by any means, we always strive towards that more perfect union, trying to improve,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said at a recent press conference on the report, which covers developments that took place in 2019. “We remain the greatest nation in the history of civilization.” Antigua and Barbuda: The Caribbean nation decriminalized cannabis, enabling the government to “uphold the religious rights of persons of the Hindu and Rastafarian faiths,” the report states. “It allows these persons to apply for a special religious license to cultivate the plant within their private dwelling, use the plant for religious purposes within their private dwelling or within their approved place of worship, and transport the plant between their private dwelling and approved place of worship.” “In the wake of decriminalization of marijuana use and cultivation for religious purposes, Rastafarian leaders continued to state publicly the government had taken steps to recognize the dignity and worth of the Rastafarian community,” the State Department noted. That said, the cannabis license for religious purposes “does not permit any commercial or financial transaction involving any part of the cannabis plant.”
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