Search Results: marijuana policy (1264)

Using cannabis legalization as a platform to popularity is all the rage for this latest round of Democratic presidential candidates. Nearly every candidate in the blue party has endorsed some form of cannabis-policy reform, ranging from full-scale legalization at the federal level to letting states decide on their own.

Former Colorado governor John Hickenlooper, who announced his run for the White House on March 4, arguably has more experience with the issue than any other candidate in this primary race: He presided over the state’s implementation of recreational cannabis from the vote for Amendment 64 in November 2012 through early 2019, when he was term-limited out of the governor’s slot. Under Hickenlooper, Colorado has earned more tax revenue from legal pot than any other state so far and boasts one of the most advanced medical marijuana programs in the nation.

Mason Tvert, a key figure in the passage of Amendment 64, the 2012 measure that legalized limited recreational marijuana sales, and the Denver pot-legalization regulation that preceded it, is leaving his post as communications director for the national Marijuana Policy Project in favor of a similar position at VS Strategies, a Denver-based consulting firm that’s become a national powerhouse.

Now that the count is finally completed and Denver voters have approved the social use of marijuana, here’s the question everyone’s asking: What happens next?

The ordinance does not include a timeline that requires the city to start licensing businesses right away. Instead, Denver has a sixty-day window to create the application that a business will use to apply for a social-use permit, according to Dan Rowland, citywide communications advisor for the City and County of Denver. City officials will start drafting that application on Tuesday, November 22.

Ashley Kilroy

Denver Mayor Michael Hancock announced Monday that Ashley Kilroy will be adding a new job title to her resume.

In addition to serving as the city’s executive director of the Office of Marijuana Policy, she will replace Stacie Loucks as the director of Excise and Licenses, the central business-licensing department for the City and County of Denver. The Office of Marijuana Policy will become a division of Excise and Licenses, which has long handled licensing for dispensaries.

It’s been two days since New York City began a more lenient, pot-friendly approach to public display of cannabis. And while we won’t have any concrete data for weeks or months, we imagine it’s already changed life in the Big Apple. People aren’t going to be arrested for public display of small amounts of pot after cops stop them, frisk them and demand they turn out their pockets – eliminating a major tool that the cops used to criminalize black and brown people in the city.
But it doesn’t exactly legalize pot use, either. Woody Harrelson and the cast of Saturday Night Live summed up the changes beautifully last week. Video below.

Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton and a bud of marijuana that legal Minnesota patients will never be able to access.


In a press release sent our way by an MNGOP-affiliated source, the D.C.-based Marijuana Policy Project PAC pledges to make a maximum financial contribution of $4,000 to Jeff Johnson’s gubernatorial campaign. But lest you think the nation’s largest marijuana policy organization is some sort of surprisingly right-leaning group, the release also notes that the PAC plans to give a matching contribution to the Senate DFL PAC. Take that, DFL Gov. Mark Dayton!
The beef, of course, has to do with Dayton’s initial reluctance to support any sort of medical marijuana bill during this year’s legislative session. And though he did ultimately sign off on one, it didn’t go as far as the legislation supported by Johnson and the DFL-controlled Senate.


The same group that pushed for the legalization of limited amounts of cannabis for adults 21 and up in Colorado said they are officially starting their campaign for similar legislation in 2016 in California. The group officially filed paperwork yesterday with the California Secretary of State.
The announcement comes on top of the group pushing measures in Arizona, Massachusetts and Nevada in 2016, as well as Alaska this fall.


Earlier this month, high-ranking folks from the health department staffers gave an all-day presentation about pot. They urged the public to take a look at the first draft of rules governing the program, as well as the application for growers, and be honest.
In response, the DC-based Marijuana Policy Project, whose lobbyists played a key role in getting legislation passed here, submitted a six-page critique. The goal, writes Robert Capecchi, a deputy director, should be to avoid regulating the growers out of business while offering protections for patients and the facilities that produce the medicine.

TaberAndrewBain/FlickrCommons


Just when a corporate giant like the New York Times begins to restore your faith in the main stream media, along comes another Sunday episode of Meet The Press to leave you stopping in mid-toke to scream at your TV.
The channel cannot change fast enough when someone like John McCain is being asked, for some damn reason, for his opinion on foreign policy, yet not being asked how the hell he thought that bringing us Sarah Palin was a good idea. This week, however, the topic turned to pot, and guest panelist and Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus gave us all a renewed hatred for out of touch journalists.


With the vote on medical marijuana a mere four months away, a group chaired by both those who advocate and those who are opposed to medical weed has formed a Blue Ribbon Commission to provide research, expert opinions, and feedback on a wide range of medical marijuana issues.
Florida For Care says its purpose is to help formulate a medical marijuana “Gold Standard” for the state by holding several meetings between now and November throughout Florida to not only educate people, but to serve as a resource for state legislators as they seek to develop and support medical marijuana policies. Read more over at the Broward-Palm Beach New Times.

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