District Attorney Kim Ogg and heads of local law enforcement announced Thursday that, starting March 1, all police agencies in Harris County will no longer arrest people caught with four ounces or less of marijuana, and the DA’s office will no longer be prosecuting those cases.
The remarkable move, which Ogg had championed throughout her 2016 campaign, pushes the third largest county in the nation to the forefront of marijuana reform in places where it is still illegal. Harris County will join only the Brooklyn County District Attorney’s Office in New York in choosing to divert misdemeanor marijuana defendants away from jail entirely, saving taxpayers millions of dollars and saving thousands of people the lifelong burden of a criminal record. Here are the details.
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.
Dear Stoner: What is the number of plants one can cultivate with a medical marijuana card? I’ve heard you can have up to 75 if you’re a caregiver, but I’ve also heard Colorado will be setting a state maximum of twelve.
Pete
Dear Pete: Current medical marijuana caregivers can actually have up to 99 plants for a maximum of five patients, thanks to a bill passed in 2015 — but the clamps have been tightening ever since. Caregivers with extended plant counts of more than 36 plants in their homes must now register with the state, and Governor John Hickenlooper has been vocal about further cutting those counts in 2017 because of concerns about the black market.
The rumblings you’ve been hearing about a twelve-plant maximum are true: The state has been pushing to limit a patient’s plant count to twelve in private homes this year, as well as to adopt a more detailed patient registration system and ban recreational co-ops. If you don’t think twelve is enough, try to get an extended plant count while you still can; they’re not dead yet.
No pain, no gain: Sunday’s Super Bowl was a bruiser. No doubt plenty of the game’s players are in pain today — pain that might be alleviated with medical marijuana. Here are ten NFL players who have voiced their support for marijuana.
Three years ago, a group of women came together in Denver to form their own cannabis community, which they called Women Grow. Today the organization has more than 1,500 members in 35 states, and each chapter gets together the first Thursday of every month. “This is the power of women coming together!” says Leah Heise, CEO of Women Grow.
Richard Kirk has pleaded guilty to fatally shooting his wife, Kristine Kirk, in 2014.
The case was among the biggest of that year in part because Kirk was said to have been under the influence of a marijuana edible at the time of the shooting and speculation suggested he would claim in court that the slaying resulted from a bad reaction to it. But his guilty plea means that pot edibles won’t be put on trial.
Leah Heise is sitting in a green room behind the stage of the Ellie Caulkins Opera House, by a wide mirror that takes up the entire wall beneath a row of round-bulb makeup lights. Countless performers have prepared for the stage in this room, but now it’s Women Grow’s turn to shine.
Women Grow, founded in Denver in 2014, was created to connect entrepreneurs in cannabis with other thought leaders and empower the next generation of cannabis businesswomen. The organization is hosting its annual Leadership Summit in Denver right now; women and men from all over the country came to share their stories, network and learn more about what it means to be an entrepreneur in cannabis.
We sat down with Women Grow CEO Heise to learn more about the organization and her plans for 2017.
Update: The Colorado Senate just approved SB 17-17; Kent Lambert was the only no vote. It now moves on to the House. Here’s our original story:
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder may be the next addition to Colorado’s list of qualifying conditions for medical marijuana. On January 30, the state Senate committee on Veterans and Military Affairs heard arguments for SB 17-17, the Post-Traumatic Stress Bill, before a standing-room-only crowd.
State Senator Ray Scott, chair of the committee, called upon victims, veterans, physicians and advocates to testify on behalf of cannabis use for stress disorders, including PTSD.
Advocacy for cannabis at the national level is more important now than ever before, said Aaron Smith, executive director of the National Cannabis Industry Association, as he opened NCIA’s Seed to Sale Show on January 31.
NCIA ensures that cannabis-industry professionals have a voice and a seat at the table in Washington D.C., Smith noted as he explained not only how NCIA represents the cannabis industry in D.C., but how the organization plans to protect cannabis at the national level — and how the industry in Colorado can help.
Mowgli Holmes gave the keynote at the Seed to Sale Show in Denver on January 31, and he taught the crowd a thing or two — or six — about cannabis. Holmes is the co-founder and chief scientific officer at Phylos Bioscience, which has created a web of over a thousand cannabis strains. The web links strains that are in the same family and provide growers and consumers with scientific knowledge about the plant that has never been documented in one place before.