With Strawberry Pop, Pineapple Mojito and Honey Banana.
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With Strawberry Pop, Pineapple Mojito and Honey Banana.
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Dris offers a huge selection of products from their extensive network of top brands at affordable prices, all quickly delivered to your door the same day you order.
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Connected set the bar high this year with their rendition of Permanent Marker and two standout originals, Silver Spoon and Tropical Z, grabbing a ton of attention for very good reason.
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Amendment 3 will need every Florida toker’s vote.
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As the dust settles (hopefully) from the 2024 U.S. elections, the cannabis industry stands at the threshold of potentially transformative changes. Join us on November 7th at 12 PM Pacific for an engaging discussion on the ramifications of the legal landscape of cannabis, post-election. We will cover everything from the Presidential and Congressional races, to the handful of pending state ballot measure results in Florida, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Oregon.
Vince Sliwoski will guide the discussion with seasoned industry veterans Aaron Pelley and Fred Rocafort. Collectively, these experts bring a wealth of industry knowledge and experience, ensuring a comprehensive analysis of what lies ahead for the cannabis industry.
Whether you are a cannabis entrepreneur, investor, or simply keen on the future of cannabis legislation, this discussion is designed for you.
Prepare your best questions and join us for deep insights into:
The post Post-Election Cannabis Wrap – Smoke ’em if You’ve Got ’em appeared first on Harris Sliwoski LLP.
New research shows that cannabis exposure in early pregnancy doesn't directly predict autism.
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Election Day is next Monday, November 4. I have plenty of thoughts! Today I’ll stay in my lane, though, and focus on the cannabis state ballot measures.
The voting states this time around include Florida, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota. I’m aware of one other jurisdiction is doing work around the edges– namely, Oregon’s Measure 119 on unionization for certain types of cannabis licensees (more on that one here). But today we will focus on the four “new regime” measures.
With cannabis polling so favorably nationwide, you may be wondering why only four states are voting to change the plant’s legal status. I explained in a 2021 post:
Something important to understand about cannabis legalization is that only 21 states allow citizen-approved ballot initiatives. The manner in which Colorado, Washington, Oregon, California, etc., first legalized cannabis for medical or adult use simply isn’t available in a majority of states.
See: Cannabis Ballot Measures are a Sucker’s Game: Notes from South Dakota, Mississippi, Nebraska and Florida (“Sucker’s Game”).
Because most states that can legalize cannabis via direct voter action have already done so, we are left with a few “try, try again” jurisdictions. To wit, Florida, Nebraska and the Dakotas have all had one or more bites at the apple, and each is back for more.
In late September, my colleague Fred Rocafort gave a nice summary of this one. See Florida Cannabis Legalization Vote Q&A. Fred explained:
Florida is set to vote this coming Election Day on the Marijuana Legalization Initiative, also known as Amendment 3. Voters in the Sunshine State will have the chance to amend Article X, Section 29 of the Florida Constitution to allow the possession, purchase, and use of marijuana products and marijuana accessories. The proposed initiative would also allow Medical Marijuana Treatment Centers and other state licensed entities, to acquire, cultivate, process, manufacture, sell, and distribute marijuana products and accessories.
For the initiative to pass, a supermajority of 60% must vote in favor, and the vote is expected to be tight.
The 60% number is an awfully high bar, and Amendment 3 polling should make proponents nervous. A CBS News/YouGov survey in May found that 56% of likely voters would vote “yes” on Amendment 3; 30% would vote “no”; and 14% remained undecided. An August poll by Florida Atlantic University also came in with a 56% “yes” rate. Again, 60% is the number we need to see here.
Florida advocates have struggled in recent times with ballot measures. In Sucker’s Game I noted:
Earlier this year, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that an adult use marijuana initiative was “misleading” after the sponsors had expended tremendous time and resources gathering 556,000 signatures. A few months later, the court ruled against the activists’ second attempt, again calling the ballot title “misleading” and conclusively barring it from statewide ballot consideration. Brutal.
I’m not aware of any litigation on Amendment 3— at least not yet. Let’s hope Florida opens up its limited medical market and we finally see what a clear majority of Floridians want in the Sunshine State.
Cornhuskers have two cannabis ballot measure to decide upon: Initiative Measure 437 and Initiative Measure 438. These new laws would: a) strip out penalties for qualified patients in possession of five ounces or less of medical marijuana, and b) create a Nebraska Medical Cannabis Commission to regulate and license the supply chain.
Will Nebraska’s Measures pass? It seems likely, with polling at nearly 60% in favor (only 50% is needed here). Unfortunately, the ballot measures are currently being challenged on “process” type grounds. As explained by the Nebraska Examiner:
[Secretary of State John] Evnen and John Kuehn, a former lawmaker and former State Board of Health member, are challenging tens of thousands of signatures on each petition in Lancaster County District Court. Evnen is alleging fraud and malfeasance on nearly 50,000 signatures for each petition, while Kuehn is challenging at least 17,000 signatures that he says were incorrectly validated.
The ballot sponsors last week alleged unethical conduct in the Attorney General’s Office as part of ongoing investigations involving their petitions. Lancaster County District Judge Susan Strong ruled Friday there were no ethical violations, including contacting prospective witnesses and their attorneys.
Sounds like a mess. Even worse, we may not have clarity on the outcome of this litigation until after Election Day. Trial begins today, October 29, in fact.
If the will of Nebraskans on cannabis is vitiated again, it will be especially sad because that has happened once already. In Sucker’s Game, I explained:
In December of 2020, the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled that the Nebraska Secretary of State had wrongly allowed a medical marijuana initiative to qualify for the ballot. This ruling came one day before the legal deadline to certify the measure for the general ballot, and after 180,000 signatures had been gathered. In an exceedingly technical opinion, the court found that that a provision allowing for both the use and production of medical marijuana products in Nebraska were two different subjects. The result here would be funny if it weren’t true.
In North Dakota, voters will be asked for a third time about legalizing marijuana for recreational use. Measure 5 would make it legal for adults ages 21 and older to produce, process, sell, and use cannabis.
Similar measures in 2018 and 2022 failed, but this one is polling pretty well. According to the North Dakota Monitor, 45% of those surveyed favor legalization; 40% opposed; and 15% remain undecided. Here again, we need 50% or better. As a proud Fargo South High School alumnus, I hope we get there.
Like North Dakota, South Dakota legalized medical marijuana use a while back, but otherwise has struggled mightily with cannabis voter measures. This year, petitioners are on attempt number three to sanction adult use, via Initiated Measure 29. As to the first couple of failed attempts, in Sucker’s Game I wrote:
Last week [in 2021], the Supreme Court of South Dakota overturned a voter-approved, constitutional amendment to legalize adult use cannabis statewide. Governor Kristi Noem instigated the anti-democratic fight on social welfare grounds, although the court made its ruling on technical grounds, finding that Amendment A violated a “single-issue” initiative subject requirement. If that’s true, you’d have to wonder why Noem et al. waited until after the election results to challenge the structure of the initiative. You might also wonder how Amendment A found itself onto the ballot in the first place. Presumably, the Secretary of State had approved this submission.
This is the second time in 2021 that a state supreme court has struck down a voter-approved initiative to legalize cannabis use . . . . These outcomes are discouraging but not surprising: the South Dakota judge who first ruled against local voters was a very recent Noem appointee[.]
After that fiasco, local voters rejected a different ballot measure, Initiated Measure 27. This year, South Dakotans will be asked to consider Initiated Measure 29, which is identical to 27. It would:
According to the Argus Leader, this one is not polling well, with 44% approving; 51.4% opposing; and 4.6% undecided. But, you know what they say: polls are not voters. Fingers crossed that this limited measure makes it through, and sticks, and South Dakota finally gets a win.
________________
We plan to announce a post-election Q&A webinar on Thursday, November 7, at 12pm PST. Stay tuned for a formal announcement with registration links, tomorrow.
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The AiroX 1g All-In-One vape is one of the most innovative and precisely engineered vapes on the market today. Find out why it's a cut above.
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Discerning smokers take note: these all-natural leaf wraps are the real deal. Rolling a good blunt is an art form, and if you roll your own, you know a decent wrap can make all the difference. Al Capone sets the bar way above decent, offering premium, all-natural leaf wraps made for quality from seed to […]
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On September 25th, the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission (OLCC) sent notices to seven licensed testing laboratories, proposing license cancellation in some cases and suspension or fines in others. The notices center on alleged THC inflation, and extend back to instances identified in 2023. We only have eleven labs in Oregon accredited to do this mandatory work, so OLCC chasing seven of them is a big deal.
This story broke yesterday afternoon in the Portland Business Journal (“Journal”). See: Oregon cannabis labs face shutdown in testing crackdown. I’m guessing that link is paywalled for most of our readers, so I’m glad to have this platform to share some thoughts below.
An obvious question here is why OLCC has proposed to expel some of these licensees, but only suspend or fine others. We’re talking about Category I violations across the board, after all, and the default sanction for any Category I violation is license revocation.
Here, though, the Commission seems to be looking at conduct in two distinct camps: a) conduct that simply could be negligence (and specifically, lazy sampling); and b) attempts to rig results by adulterating products. All seven labs got dinged on “a”, while three also got dinged on “b.”
In the “a” notices, charges include: i) failures to ensure an entire batch of marijuana was available for sampling, and ii) insufficient sampling increments. In the “b” notices, OLCC alleges that “the Licensee’s employees, agents or representatives intentionally added a cannabinoid concentrate, kief [], to the samples taken for testing.” Which is not great.
Controversy around cannabis testing is an old story in Oregon. Prior to OLCC regulation, we had “medical marijuana” from 1998 to 2014 with no testing requirements whatsoever. In 2014, after dispensary licensing commenced, the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) issued poorly-written testing rules that no one really followed. In those days lab shopping was common, dozens of harmful pesticides were allowed, and OHA didn’t even have the authority to regulate producers or labs, anyway.
In 2015, the Oregonian published a landmark investigative piece called “A Tainted High” exposing all of this and more. In 2016, the OLCC program launched, with more testing rules and more enforcement authority, at which point a serious testing bottleneck ensued. Once things cleared up, focus shifted to microbiological and heavy metal contaminants, alongside inflated THC numbers. In 2019, the Secretary of State recommended shelf audits at dispensaries, which eventually did occur.
The latest noise around testing was the aspergillus litigation, where the Cannabis Industry Alliance of Oregon (CIAO) won a temporary stay of enforcement on testing for that mold, and OHA abandoned rules on the topic. In 2023, we also got House Bill 2931, which creates a state-run cannabis reference lab. In June of last year, I wrote:
Why did everyone, including industry, feel a state cannabis reference lab was needed? First, for as long as the OLCC program has existed (and even before that, in the OHA medical program), agencies have fielded complaints from cannabis licensees around testing. Those complaints include allegations of labs spiking potency levels on test samples, and of labs falsifying failed test results. From there, you have the related concepts of “lab shopping” by licensees and “pay to play” testing with labs.
State agencies have argued that to properly regulate licensed labs, an independent mechanism to verify test results is needed. Audits have similarly recommended this. The newly created reference lab will provide: a) a neutral, third-party source for testing and re-testing; b) quality assurance review for licensed labs; and c) a mechanism to audit complaints from licensees about faulty lab testing. This is a positive development.
So, everyone has been looking at this for a while. And now we’re full circle on this inflated THC thing– a problem that is not unique to Oregon.
All of the OLCC labs that received the September 25th notices have until tomorrow, October 25th, to request a hearing before an administrative law judge. This is a critical deadline; hopefully all of them have done so. The rules also require an answer to be filed with any hearing request, but traditionally OLCC affords licensees up to two weeks prior to any prehearing conference to make the submission. (This is not advice.)
You’re here for the big question, though, which is: does OLCC plan to go to the mat on this, with massive fines, suspensions and license cancellations? I don’t think so, necessarily, but it’s obviously a case-by-case thing. Much will depend on the underlying testimony and reports; whether a lab owner knew what their employees were allegedly doing; how the licensees respond; etc. But as I told the Journal: “They can’t have no labs. OLCC may push for labs to come to them and say we’re sorry, it will never happen again, and show internal (standard operating procedures) and maybe creative solutions” in order to safeguard testing.
No. I told the Journal that “it’s not fair just to blame the labs.” And it’s not. With kiefing, in particular, the lab employees would have received the concentrate from customers in most or all cases. This behavior is ultimately driven by market pressures: for whatever stupid reason, the strongest weed tends to attract the most interest and highest prices. (Thankfully, alcohol doesn’t work this way.)
But I digress. Before signing off, I’d like to highlight one final quote I gave the Journal. It’s this: “They’re going after the labs, then the employees involved, then all the producers and wholesalers who are implicated. You saw the first wave, but you’re going to see more.”
Anyone else receiving a violation notice from OLCC will have the same opportunity to respond, and hopefully settle, as the labs. All of this will take some time to play out.
___________
If, in the coming weeks and months, you are one of the unfortunate licensees or permittees on the receiving end of an OLCC charging document, I recommend you start your reading here. Then, give us a call. We can help.
The post Oregon Cracks Down on THC Inflation and Testing Labs appeared first on Harris Sliwoski LLP.
With Headbanger, Scotty’s Cake, and the Puffco Pivot.
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A 93 point indoor NorCal banger.
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Leafly experts look at the dynastic Gelato strain and a dozen of its best crosses based on popularity and their impact on the scene.
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Fragrant 85-point indoor from New York.
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Puffco updates the dab pen for the 2024 holidays for $130.
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Why settle for lesser cartridges when AiroPods exist? See why the Live Rosin, Live Resin, Live Flower, Artisan & Strain Series are must-buys.
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Hibernica has free, fast deliveries to all of the Bronx and southern Westchester County this October
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Wedding Cake x Biscotti for 97 out of 100 points.
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Top-shelf Melonade x Biscotti scores 95 out of 100.
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Here come the Permanent Marker crosses! Yum!
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An independent, expert review of premium hemp-derived THC gummies from Minnesota.
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Congressman Earl Blumenauer (D-Oregon) is retiring next month. Mr. Blumenauer, or “Earl” as he often asked to be called, has been a leading proponent of cannabis reform since 1973, when Oregon was the first state to decriminalize user amounts of the substance. Blumenauer was a brand new face in the Oregon House of Representatives at that time, and he has been a vocal proponent of cannabis reform ever since.
I was lucky enough to work with Blumenauer and his office over the years, on everything from concepts around an interstate cannabis exchange (Oregon, California, and other states have now passed bills on this), to hosting him at my old Cannabis Law and Policy course. One thing that stuck out for me in those conversations was how optimistic Earl always was about federal cannabis reform. When pressed, he would say “this year more likely than not.”
Blumenauer wasn’t always right, of course, but optimism is required if you’re going to fight the War on Drugs for over half a century. And his federal legislative accomplishments have been impressive. In 2012, Blumenauer and former-Representative Jared Polis released the first comprehensive legislative blueprint to legalize, tax and regulate cannabis federally. In 2014, Blumenauer boosted the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment, now known as the Blumenauer amendment, which prohibits the Department of Justice from spending funds to interfere with state medical cannabis laws. It worked.
In 2017, Blumenauer was a co-founder of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus, which continues to drive cannabis policy forward today. Blumenauer’s first legislative win (sort of) came in 2020, when his Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act became the first comprehensive legalization bill to pass either chamber Congress. He made more history in 2022, when his Medical Marijuana and Cannabidiol Research Expansion Act was signed into law by President Biden. This proposal is still the only federal standalone marijuana reform ever enacted.
More recently, Blumenauer continues to press DEA to increase transparency in the scheduling review process. He has also pushed the Biden-Harris Administration to deschedule cannabis entirely. On his way out, he continues to urge the Administration to embrace the political benefits of cannabis reform, repeatedly making the case to cabinet secretaries. He also continues to push:
Blumenauer even found time to sponsor a piece of psychedelics legislation, known as the Visions Act, which would insulate state psilocybin programs from federal action. That bill would come in as a spending appropriations rider, much like the Blumenauer amendment does each year for cannabis.
There have been other prominent cannabis advocates in Congress over the many years, from legacy stalwarts like Bernie Sanders to “evolved” politicians like Kamala Harris. But no one else was there as long, or fought as consistently, or as hard, as Earl Blumenauer.
When cannabis is federally legalized, we should remember the relentless advocacy and vision of the rep from Oregon’s 3rd District. Earl Blumenauer is a true cannabis champion.
The post Congress is About to Lose Its Greatest Cannabis Advocate (Ever) appeared first on Harris Sliwoski LLP.
Try Cornbread Hemp's new USDA-certified organic THC gummy. It's the first hemp THC gummy of its kind, with tons of wholesome goodness.
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Register to vote today to make your voice heard.
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New THC+CBC Mood Mints from Rare Cannabinoid Company bring on mood-boosting effects quickly thanks to nanoemulsification.
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At least 8 states and Amsterdam have new stores for you.
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For anyone who couldn’t attend last Wednesday’s webinar on cannabis receiverships, we are pleased to present the replay video below. It’s also hosted on YouTube, here.
This webinar covered a lot of ground, and it was certainly timely. The following afternoon, reporting broke that Harborside, one of the biggest names in cannabis, was pushed into receivership by a secured lender.
If you’d like some context on why we held this webinar and what it’s about, check out our original blog post here.
Finally, please reach out if you want to explore insolvency or work-out options in or around a cannabis business. You can email webinar panelists Matt Goldberg here and Ethan Minkin here.
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California's dopest producers of beats and trees chop it up.
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