Search Results: portland (128)

Graphic: Medical Marijuana Blog

​The City Council of Portland, Maine has unanimously agreed to include a medical marijuana dispensary in the city’s business zoning ordinance.

Three companies have been selected by the state Department of Health to dispense cannabis  to authorized patients in Maine. The state-licensed dispensaries will be in six locations around the state, including downtown Portland, reports Amanda Hill at WLBZ2.
The state of Maine has agreed to allow Northeast Patients Group to open dispensaries in Portland, Thomaston, Augusta or Waterville, and Hermon.
The group is looking at a number of locations in Portland, now that the zoning ordinance allows it to open a dispensary within the business 2, 3, and 7 zones of the city.
One key location under discussion is the former location of a Key Bank on the corner of Congress and St. John Streets, but one concern is that it’s too tight an area to accommodate a lot of traffic.

Photo: Hemp News
Jack Herer has worked for decades for this community. Let’s show him what we can give back.

​Everyone is invited to a benefit event Friday, Dec. 4 at 8 p.m. at the Village Ballroom in Portland for hemp legend and author, Jack Herer.

The Village Ballroom is at 700 N.E. Dekum Street. Not so coincidentally, that means it is directly above the Oregon Cannabis Cafe, Oregon NORML’s spiffy new medical marijuana patient resource center that has received an avalanche of publicity since opening last month.
The Herer benefit is organized by The Hemp and Cannabis Foundation (THCF), and is co-sponsored by Oregon NORML and Texas-based Waco NORML.
“We are joining together to raise money for Jack Herer, who suffered a heart attack after delivering a passionate speech on stage at the Portland Hempstalk Festival this past September,” said THCF’s Paul Stanford.
Jack is recovering in Eugene, Ore., and making positive strides daily, according to Stanford. “He is a fighter and will surely overcome this obstacle to see the hemp plant restored to its rightful place in society,” Stanford told Toke of the Town.

Denver’s struggles with regulating social marijuana use have been well documented, but this city isn’t alone in facing such challenges. According to representatives from Alaska and Oregon, cities such as Portland and Anchorage are in the same boat.

During Denver’s annual Marijuana Management Symposium, a three-day conference about pot policy that returned October 31 through November 2, public officials from around the globe gathered in the Mile High City to discuss legal marijuana and its impacts. On top of roundtable chats about business regulations, law enforcement and public-health concerns, the conference offered a ninety-minute discussion about social marijuana use.

After Denver Environmental Health prohibited sales of kratom for human consumption in the wake of a U.S. Food and Drug Administration alert late last year, advocates for the plant-based pain reliever spoke out, with many saying the product had helped them kick addictions to powerful opioids, including heroin. These testimonials are echoed by Roxanne Gullikson, facility director for Portland, Maine’s Greener Pastures Holisticare, a residential treatment center opening next month that will use kratom in combination with marijuana as part of a formal and comprehensive addiction treatment regimen. To her, Denver’s ban is both unjustified and potentially damaging.

“It’s very counterintuitive,” Gullikson says. “With the rising rates of deaths by overdoses, we need to have all options on the table. And certainly, removing one that’s non-toxic and non-lethal makes no sense at all.”

Mixing gourmet food and premium cannabis was a hot topic for white-collar America after the New Yorker‘s April feature story on the “Martha Stewart of edibles,” a Portland food writer who holds cannabis-infused dinners at her home. The story was nothing new to us in the Mile High, of course, where there have been plenty of edibles, both legal and illegal, to choose from for quite some time.

But what if you want to separate weed and food while still enjoying them together?

The Denver 4/20 Rally, scheduled to take place on April 20, is offering something new this year. Each attendee age 21 or over will receive a black bag containing tons of swag from marijuana businesses that were unable to legally give away such items at big public events in the past because of restrictive advertising rules related to cannabis.

Civic Center Park Productions’ Santino Walter, who spoke to us for our recent post “Inside the 2017 Denver 4/20 Rally Starring 2 Chainz,” says the black-bag plan was formulated after consultation with representatives from the City Attorney’s Office and Denver’s Marijuana Policy Division. The result, he maintains, is “the most compliant way for licensed cannabis companies in Colorado to promote themselves at an event.”

Colorado’s rules for marijuana advertising are exceedingly tight in comparison to a number of other states that have legalized recreational cannabis, as I saw firsthand during a recent trip to Seattle and Portland. For instance, outdoor advertising is generally prohibited here, as outlined in the following excerpt from the “Permanent Rules Related to the Colorado Retail Marijuana Code:”

Except as otherwise provided in this rule, it shall be unlawful for any Retail Marijuana Establishment to engage in Advertising that is visible to members of the public from any street, sidewalk, park or other public place, including Advertising utilizing any of the following media: any billboard or other outdoor general Advertising device; any sign mounted on a vehicle, any hand-held or other portable sign; or any handbill, leaflet or flier directly handed to any person in a public place, left upon a motor vehicle, or posted upon any public or private property without the consent of the property owner.

The study is from a U.S. government agency.

Here’s your daily dose of pot news from the newsletter WeedWeek.

U.S. teenagers find it harder to buy weed than they have for 24 years, according to an annual survey by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). The same study found that teen drug use is declining nationally.

Humboldt County’s growing areas voted against REC, but the cities voted for it.

A long awaited task force report in Canada recommended 18 as the legal buying age. For more see hereand here. The country plans to legalize REC next year.

REC businesses in Portland, Oregon, are struggling to obtain licenses. And the head of the state’s lab accrediting agency is stepping down.

Florida lawmakers are thinking about how to regulate MED. For more see here. A proposal in Ohio would allow 40 MED dispensaries in the state.

Tennessee Republicans are considering a MED program.

Radio Free Asia reports that Chinese visitors to North Korea buy pot by the kilogram and sell it for a healthy mark-up in China.

Australian economists say legalizing REC would be good for the Queensland economy.

Stanford Medical School professor and tobacco advertising expert Dr. Robert K. Jackler editorializes that “If nationwide legalization happens, it is essential that the tobacco industry is banned from the marijuana market.”

L.A. Weekly profiles Seventh Point LLC, a cannabis private equity firm focused on Los Angeles. The firm expects L.A., the world’s largest cannabis market, to be the “Silicon Valley” of weed. The city’s cannabis community is uniting to legalize dispensaries.

Keith McCarty, CEO of delivery app Eaze, is stepping down, shortly after the company secured $13M in funding. He’ll be replaced by Jim Patterson, who, like McCarty was a senior executive at Yammer, a workplace social network which sold to Microsoft for more than $1 billion.

The nominee doesn’t seem to care much about the environment either.
Here’s your daily dose of pot news from the newsletter WeedWeek.

President Elect Donald Trump selected Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt (R) to run the Environmental Protection Agency. Pruitt has repeatedly sued the agency to block anti-pollution laws. While this might be seen as support for states’ rights — and by extension the marijuana industry — Mark Joseph Stern at Slate calls Pruitt “ one of the phoniest federalists in the GOP.

In particular, Pruitt joined Nebraska in suing Colorado over the state’s REC industry. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Homeland Security, retired Marine General John F. Kelly, opposes legalization saying that it increases health care costs and crime, and that the state experiments with it open the U.S. to accusations of hypocrisy from Latin American nations. Kelly is open to the plant having medical benefits.

Meanwhile veterans’ group American Legion, pushed the administration  to loosen cannabis laws. ” I think they were a little caught off guard and didn’t expect such a progressive statement from such a traditional and conservative organization,” a senior Legion official told Marijuana.com.

It also emerged that Jim O’Neill, a Silicon Valley investor who Marijuana.com describes as a “ Marijuana legalization activist,” could be tapped to lead the Food and Drug Administration. O’Neill is neither a doctor or scientist, typical credentials for the position. For more see here.

Marijuana entrepreneurs want Trump to see them as “ job creators,” Forbes reports.

The New York Observer, which is owned by Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, called for rescheduling.

In an effort to protect marijuana laws under the Trump administration, Colorado is cracking down on home growers. The state is poised to surpass 3,000 licensed businesses next year.

What attorney general nominee Sen. Jeff Sessions (R) means for state-legal pot business remains the big green question. In an in-depth piece, Politico says Sessions could easily “ ignore the will of millions of pro-pot voters” and crack down. Time lists seven reasons Trump is unlikely to go after the industry.

The Sessions hearing has been scheduled for Jan. 10 and 11.

Pro-cannabis group Americans for Safe Access (ASA) is petitioning the Justice Department to correct what ASA says is incorrect or misleading information about cannabis on the DEA web site. ASA is represented pro-bono by the major San Francisco law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe.

Though he’s promised to legalize next year, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he still wants police to prosecute dispensaries. His pro-pot supporters feel “cheated.”

Canadian producer Cronos Group will work with First Nations groups in Canada to help them join the cannabis economy.

An upcoming March ballot measure for regulating the industry in Los Angeles raises many questions.

A Democratic state Senator in Texas introduced a “longshot” MED bill. Virginia Senate Majority Leader Thomas K. Norment Jr. (R), asked for a study of how the state’s cannabis laws might be changed.Tennessee could also be in play.

Oregon took emergency steps to lower the testing burden on growers, but the industry is skeptical.

REC opponents in Maine were accused of not providing enough volunteers for a recount of the recent vote. A judge ruled that following the recent vote, MED dispensaries in Montana can reopen immediately.

Maryland named 102 pre-approved dispensary license winners. In New York, licensees are worried about competition in the relatively small market.

Guam is implementing a MED program. Dusseldorf, Germany is on the path to legalization.

Singapore executed Chijioke Stephen Obioha by hanging. A Nigerian national and football player, Obioha was found with 2.5 kg (5.5 pounds) of marijuana in 2007. According to Singapore law, anyone with more than 500 g is presumed to be trafficking.

Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte, known as “The Punisher” for his advocacy of vigilante murders,threatened his human rights activist critics.

A Florida county sheriff’s office may have trained drug sniffing dogs with material other than drugs, according to ProPublica. Another ProPublica report led Portland, Ore. to change its policy for the drug tests used in many arrests.

The U.S. Supreme Court won’t take up the case of a Native American church in Hawaii that wants to be exempt for marijuana laws.

A college student who had $11,000 confiscated at the Cincinnati airport after his checked bag smelled of pot, challenged the forfeiture and got his money back.

Seantrel Henderson, a Buffalo Bills offensive lineman, may sue the NFL over his second cannabis suspension of the season. Henderson’s Crohn’s disease forced him to have two and a half feet of his colon removed.

The Bay Area has the country’s highest concentration of cannabis users in the country.

My friend Reilly Capps wrote a story for The Rooster about “ Stoners anonymous.

A survey found that cannabis is attracting an increasingly upscale clientele.

Anita Thompson, widow of Hunter S. Thompson, wants to market the gonzo journalist’s personal cannabis strains. Skepticism abounds.

The founder of Healing Church, a Catholicism-inflected pot “ministry” in Rhode Island, is involved in abizarre legal situation. If I’m reading this correctly, Anne Armstrong had a vision of cannabis leaves on a six-foot replica of the Virgin of Guadeloupe – an image said to have appeared on a Mexican peasant’s poncho in 1531. Armstrong later obtained and then lost custody of the replica. She also faces a possession charge.

The Stranger put together a cannabis gift guide. It includes weed filled advent calendars and Christmas ornaments. The piece also cites scripture to prove Jesus was a stoner.

Country music legend Loretta Lynn smoked pot for the first time at 84, for her glaucoma. She didn’t like it, but defended Willie Nelson and the right to do it.

A woman in Greensboro, N.C., was “shocked,” in a bad way, when someone mistakenly mailed her four pounds of weed.

Dear Stoner: Now that other states have legalized marijuana, what does that mean for Colorado? Will the roads be less crowded?
Kip

Dear Kip: Probably not. I’m not even going to get into the whole “legal weed is why this state is so crowded and more expensive” discussion, but maybe that will be settled over the next year, when Coloradans see yet more transplants coming into the state — even though several other states just legalized marijuana. Since 2012, Denver has regularly been in the top three metro areas experiencing employment, population and rental growth, and while that growth has slowed since 2015, this city is still growing. California, Massachusetts, Maine and Nevada all voted to legalize recreational marijuana on November 8, and although some California cities are popular with millennials, Boston and Las Vegas aren’t projected to experience anywhere near the growth in employment and residents that booming Western cities such as Denver, Portland and Seattle have.

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