Speculation continues about what anti-pot U.S. Attorney General nominee Sen. Jeff Sessions could mean for the legal marijuana industry. The Associated Press says cannabis has the upper hand but could still collapse. Fortune says smaller companies, already dealing with larger competitors, can expect more pain.
Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee say Sessions will get an contentious confirmation hearing.
An op-ed in the Wall Street Journal says Sessions is not a racist, and in fact championed the end of sentencing discrepancies between cocaine, associated with affluent whites, and crack, which devastated inner cities. President Obama signed the Fair Sentencing Act into law in 2010. Sessions later said that by granting clemency retroactively to non-violent drug offenders, Obama was abusing the law.
D.C. pot-activists were received warmly at Sessions office but didn’t leave feeling especially reassured. Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D.-N.Y.) aides weren’t as welcoming. “So typical that you are taking this less seriously than Republicans,” an activist said. The whole piece, in USNews, is worth a read, and funny too.
President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, Rep. Tom Price (R- Ga.), is another staunch prohibitionist who, if confirmed, would have the authority to interfere with state-legal MED access.
I wrote a story for California Sunday about efforts in Oakland to create a diverse cannabis industry. The photos are by Pulitzer winner Preston Gannaway.
President Obama discussed legalization at length in an interview with Rolling Stone, conducted the day after the election:
I’ve been very clear about my belief that we should try to discourage substance abuse. And I am not somebody who believes that legalization is a panacea. But I do believe that treating this as a public-health issue, the same way we do with cigarettes or alcohol, is the much smarter way to deal with it. Typically how these classifications are changed are not done by presidential edict but are done either legislatively or through the DEA. As you might imagine, the DEA, whose job it is historically to enforce drug laws, is not always going to be on the cutting edge about these issues.
[Laughs] What about you? Are you gonna get on the cutting edge?
Look, I am now very much in lame-duck status. And I will have the opportunity as a private citizen to describe where I think we need to go. But in light of these referenda passing, including in California, I’ve already said, and as I think I mentioned on Bill Maher’s show, where he asked me about the same issue, that it is untenable over the long term for the Justice Department or the DEA to be enforcing a patchwork of laws, where something that’s legal in one state could get you a 20-year prison sentence in another. So this is a debate that is now ripe, much in the same way that we ended up making progress on same-sex marriage. There’s something to this whole states-being-laboratories-of-democracy and an evolutionary approach. You now have about a fifth of the country where this is legal.
In a new interview with Rolling Stone magazine, outgoing President Barack Obama makes his most explicit comments about marijuana decriminalization to date.
He argues that cannabis should be treated as a public-health issue along the lines of cigarettes and alcohol — and pointedly notes that most of those who voted for President-elect Donald Trump agree with him.
Soon we’ll all be able to smoke strains cured by the gonzo legend himself.
After Hunter S. Thompson died in 2005, his widow was approached by countless dispensaries and marijuana growers asking to use her late husband’s brand on their grows. “It’s the same story every time: Somebody wants to slap Hunter’s name on their strain,” Anita Thompson said in an interview with the Aspen Times. “If I put Hunter’s name on somebody else’s strain, I can never go back and say, ‘No, this is the authentic one.’”
It’s early evening in a parking lot outside a DoubleTree in northeast Denver. At the north end of the lot is a 1987 Winnebago with seven people inside, gathered around a table covered with cannabis products: a concentrate pen, a dab rig, some bud flower and edibles. Once most of the group has gotten loaded, the seven are going to spend the rest of the night at the hotel, with a bunch of cops.
They’re all volunteers in a “green lab,” part of a training program that Understanding Legal Marijuana LLC puts on for law enforcement officials covering all things related to the cannabis industry, including products, culture and how to look for impairment during a roadside sobriety test. This session is also an opportunity for cops to talk openly with cannabis users in an atmosphere far less stressful than a traffic stop.
Dear Stoner: Someone recently told me that I have too many plants in my basement grow. I live with two other adults in Five Points and have twelve plants locked up downstairs. I’m good, right?
The Cheese
Dear Cheese: Colorado law allows adults 21 and over to grow up to six plants in their homes, and if you have two or more adults in the house, then you can grow twelve if the plants are for more than one of the residents. Denver still abides by that rule, but not all towns do. Your friend might live in a nearby town, like Centennial or Aurora, that has different rules and limits on residential growing. Although cultivating cannabis in your own home is allowed in the state constitution, the amendment that legalized it also gave municipalities the right to change those rules, just as they have the right to ban dispensaries. Your friend might also be under the impression that all twelve are for you, which is technically illegal. But as long as one of your roommates will lay claim to half of the crop, then you’re in the clear. Just make sure that any inquiring police officer is aware of that, too.
Your dog is anxious, or so itchy that he won’t stop scratching himself until he’s raw — or maybe his joints ache to the point where he can barely move.
If your first instinct is to give your pooch medical marijuana, don’t do it. As we reported way back in 2010, many veterinarians say pot can kill your dog — or at least make him or her very ill.
Dispensaries experienced record-breaking online sales on Cyber Monday. “We saw our highest number of orders ever,” says Joel Milton, CEO of Baker.
Baker is a software platform that helps dispensaries connect with its customers by offering online ordering, rewards programs, messaging services and other things to help put a business in front of its clients. Baker currently operates in 175 dispensaries in Colorado, Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington and Ontario; about half of its business is in this state.
Marijuana legalization has apparently failed in Arizona, with uncounted votes unlikely to turn the defeat into victory as they did with the state’s medical-marijuana measure in 2010.
As evidence mounts that the gulf between the “no” and “yes” votes on Prop 205 is too vast for the measure to catch up, cannabis supporters are left with one burning question: How could this happen in Arizona, when voters in California and as many as five other states approved the legalization of recreational or medical marijuana?
Art Basel Miami Beach, one of the nation’s biggest art fairs, is upon us, which means all sorts of cool, interesting, weird, shocking, and downright breathtaking art will soon be splashed across town for all the world to see. If you can imagine it, it’s probably represented somewhere during Miami Art Week. And one booth at the art fair Spectrum Miami aims to set your imagination ablaze — with weed.
What will President-elect Donald Trump do about the 28 states that have legalized medical marijuana — and the eight, including Colorado, that have also approved recreational sales? Plenty of people have been asking that since the election, and last week, regulatory attorney Tom Downeyoffered his opinion on these “interesting times for the marijuana industry.” Responds Jann: