Patrick Whittemore/Boston Herald |
New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch, for the second time since 2009, has vetoed a bill which would have provided safe access to medical marijuana for seriously ill patients in his state |
Patrick Whittemore/Boston Herald |
New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch, for the second time since 2009, has vetoed a bill which would have provided safe access to medical marijuana for seriously ill patients in his state |
Banking issues have been a major stumbling block for the cannabis industry, with banks refusing to work with marijuana-related companies for fear of coming under scrutiny of federal regulators. So far, attempts to clear up that conflict have gone nowhere in Congress — but now a former federal government employee has come up with a partial solution: Tokken, an app for both customers and dispensaries that was recently named a finalist for the 2017 SXSW Interactive Innovation Award.
A former banker for Merrill Lynch, Lamine Zarrad came to Colorado in 2014 as a regulator with the U.S. Treasury. He soon became the department’s liaison between the cannabis industry and Washington, D.C., helping to address fiscal concerns of both the federal government and Colorado businesses. That led to his working with compliance experts in the financial sector to try to untangle the banking issue.
The question of use by women who are expecting heats up.
Excerpted from the newsletter WeedWeek. Get your free and confidential subscription at WeedWeek.net.
A study suggests that cannabis use during pregnancy affects brain development. More Colorado newborns are testing positive for THC.
Thirty-three were hospitalized in Brooklyn, for suspected synthetic cannabis (“K2”) overdoses in the area around a subway stop.
The National Institutes of Health sent out a request for information about varieties of marijuana and their possible research value.
Check out this chart which illustrates last week’s remarkable finding that drug prescriptions are falling in MED states.
Project CBD published a CBD Users Manual. It’s one of the better ones I’ve seen.
Cannabis allergies are climbing.
The big move by Scotts Miracle-Grow into cannabis is dividing the industry.
Buzzfeed makes the case that Facebook and Google’s cannabis policy enforcement is a mess.
The U.K.’s GW Pharmaceuticals which has seen its stock soar on data from its cannabis-based drug Epidiolex, plans to raise $252 million on the Nasdaq exchange with Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Merrill Lynch shepherding the deal.
Business attorney Hilary Bricken lays out six weed scams for investors and others to watch out for.
Compliance at Millennium Bank, a community bank in Des Plaines, Ill. is reportedly under scrutiny from state and federal authorities for working with marijuana companies.
Whitney Hobbs, a founder of Oregon distributor Highly Distributed, has sued CEO Christopher Mallott for sexual harassment that led to her departure from the company. She says he groped and smelled her. The company declined to comment but an employee refuted Hobbs’ claims.
Cannabis sales continue to climb in Colorado and support the state’s economy. See here for more.
A glimpse of the future? A group of Colorado’s largest craft breweries, led a break-up of the Colorado Brewers Guild to form a new group called Craft Beer Colorado. The split follows an overhaul of state alcohol laws.
Analyst Alan Brochstein writes that Canada’s pot policies make more sense than America’s.
Former NORML head Allen St. Pierre joined a publicly-traded consultancy called Freedom Leaf.
Bill Frazetto |
“42nd Street Subway Arrest NYC 1975” |
Stop and frisk.
If you’ve ever smoked weed in New York City, you know that those three little words can do more than kill your buzz, in many cases they have ruined people’s lives. The city’s newly elected Democratic mayor Bill de Blasio has announced a change to the discriminatory and highly controversial policy, and more specifically how it will impact those busted with some buds in the Big Apple.
On Monday, we told you about Ramsey Orta, the man who filmed New York City police officers killing an unarmed, nonviolent alleged illegal cigarette dealer named Eric Garner last month and Orta’s arrest over the weekend for firearms charges after cops stop-and-frisked him along with a teenage girl he was with. In case you had any doubt that was purely for revenge, the police union rep has since come out to further drag Orta’s name through the mud. On Sunday, he issued a release, calling Orta a “criminal” who “stands to benefit” by smearing the good name of police officers.
“The arrest of Ramsey Orta for criminal possession of a firearm only underscores the dangers that brought police officers to respond to a chronic crime condition in that community,” he wrote. “It is criminals like Mr. Orta who carry illegal firearms who stand to benefit the most by demonizing the good work of police officers. Sadly, in the effort to keep neighborhoods like Tompkinsville safe, a tragedy occurred. But that doesn’t change the fact that police officers routinely risk their lives for the benefit of the community and that they have earned their support and understanding.”
Stoners using Twitter to spread the good word of the ganja may be influencing the youth of America to get high on marijuana. At least this appears to be the consensus of a recent study from the Washington University School of Medicine, which finds that social media messages pertaining to marijuana are reaching hundreds of thousands children in the United States every day.
A screen capture of a billboard from KHOU. |
It appears as though a Mexican drug cartel has incorporated outdoor advertising in its arsenal of intimidation tactics in an attempt to further infiltrate the black market drug trade in the United States. Earlier last week, as motorists in El Paso, Texas began their morning commute, many got to see a series of billboards which had gone up up overnight displaying threatening messages accented with a couple of well-dressed mannequins swinging from a noose.
Virginia seems to be the latest state to jump on the “blame marijuana for everything” bandwagon, after law enforcement in Lynchburg say marijuana led to a teen dying in the woods alone from hypothermia.
Seriously.
A Thai woman caught with nearly 40 pounds of pot in a bus station in Sungai Petani last February will be hung for her “crime” according to Malaysian English-language news site, The Star.
Thitapah Charoenchuea, a 26-year-old single mother of a ten-year-old daughter, has maintained that she is was framed and that this was someone else’s drug deal gone wrong. She says that a man she only knew as “Ali” approached her before she boarded a bus after a brief stop on a bus from Changlun to Kuala Lumpur and asked Thitapah to take care of his bags and he would meet her in Kuala Lumpur.
ReLegalize Indiana |