San Diego Receives Cannabis Equity Grant To Boost Local Weed Industry

At long last, San Diego is receiving grant money from the state as part of a program designed to help cities bolster their local cannabis industries.

The southern California city announced last month that it is receiving $880,000 from the Governor of California’s Office of Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz) as part of a statewide grant program aimed at promoting equity in the regulated marijuana market.

Under the initiative, California provided millions of dollars to cities throughout the state with their own cannabis equity grant programs.

Major cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Oakland all got in on the grant program. Last spring, officials in San Francisco announced that they had received $4.5 million from the state of California to fund its cannabis equity grant program.

But the $880,000 gift last month was the first such grant money to be awarded to San Diego. 

That is because San Diego didn’t establish its own grant program until last year, which, as the San Diego Union-Tribune noted, was “several years after other large cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Sacramento and Long Beach.”

“Receiving this critical funding source is vital to jump-starting our Cannabis Equity Program,” Lara Gates, the deputy director of San Diego’s Cannabis Business Division, said in the city’s announcement. “These dollars will provide a solid foundation for our initial cannabis equity applicants to get a strong foothold in the legal cannabis market.”

In its announcement of the grant last month, the city said the the “money will support residents seeking to enter the legal cannabis industry in San Diego through funding grants to cover permit and license fees and associated start-up property costs while providing access to the cannabis industry workforce.” 

Those funds “will be dispersed locally, supporting the state’s effort to advance economic justice for populations and communities harmed by cannabis prohibition,” the city said in the announcement, adding that the grants “will help potential business owners pay for permitting and licensing fees, access education and training, and receive property rental assistance for entrepreneurship in various sectors that support local cannabis businesses,” which include “finance, marketing, advertising and legal services, among others.”

In determining the qualifications for the grant program, the city of San Diego “found the biggest hurdles to entering the industry are lack of capital, lack of training, problems finding suitable sites and complex government regulations,” according to the Union-Tribune.

“The historical enforcement of drug laws produced profound disparities in business ownership, wage earnings and mass incarceration within the criminal justice system for African American/Black, Latino and Native American/Indigenous communities,” Kim Desmond, the San Diego Chief of Race and Equity, said in last month’s announcement. “An acknowledgment of historic institutional racism and systemic inequity is key to understanding disparities in the cannabis industry.”

The money awarded to San Diego represented the “the seventh-largest grant, after Oakland and Los Angeles with nearly $2 million each, as well as Sacramento, San Francisco and Long Beach at $1.5 million each and Humboldt County with $1.2 million,” according to the Union-Tribune.

The city of San Diego said that it “was among 16 cities and counties across the state to receive a combined $15 million in grants, funded through tax revenue generated from statewide recreational cannabis sales.”

In its cannabis equity assessment last year, the city of San Diego found that Black and Latino residents accounted for roughly 50% of total cannabis arrests since 2015, although they comprise only 29% of the city’s population.

The assessment also found that nearly 70% of cannabis business license holders are white.

The post San Diego Receives Cannabis Equity Grant To Boost Local Weed Industry appeared first on High Times.

from The Latest Marijuana News Today | HighTimes Magazine https://ift.tt/401ygRH
via IFTTT

Webinar Replay: Distressed Cannabis Businesses

On February 28, 2023, Harris Bricken attorneys Hilary Bricken (Los Angeles), Griffen Thorne (Los Angeles), Ethan Minkin (Phoenix), and Vince Sliwoski (Portland) hosted an hour-long webinar discussion about the depressed cannabis market and what distressed cannabis businesses can do about it.

During the webinar, our team talked about the lack of bankruptcy protections for distressed cannabis businesses due to federal cannabis illegality, alternatives to bankruptcy proceedings for distressed cannabis businesses (such as receiverships or assignments for the benefit of creditors), secured financing and lien remedies, regulatory ramifications of each of these things, and much more. The team also fielded live questions  from the audience on various factors affecting the depressed cannabis market.

As promised during the webinar, we wanted to make the webinar available for anyone who missed this event or for anyone who wanted to watch it more than once. So, we’ve embedded a link to the live webinar replay below. We hope you all enjoy it!

As the cannabis market goes through more twists and turns, our cannabis attorneys will be sure to keep all of you updated on the state of the industry and what we are seeing in terms of relief for distressed cannabis businesses. So as we usually say, stay tuned to the Canna Law Blog.

The post Webinar Replay: Distressed Cannabis Businesses appeared first on Harris Bricken Sliwoski LLP.

from Canna Law Blog™ https://ift.tt/83BnlqT
via IFTTT

Over 7,500 Pot Convictions Expunged in Missouri

More than 7,500 individuals in Missouri have had their prior marijuana-related convictions expunged with recreational cannabis now legal in the state.

The expungement is the latest byproduct of the constitutional amendment that was approved by Missouri voters last fall, which legalized pot for adults and cleared the way for Missourians to have their records cleared.

According to the Riverfront Times, passage of Amendment 3 “kick-started a process to expunge criminal records related to nonviolent marijuana offenses that otherwise would have been legal had Amendment 3 always been a part of Missouri’s constitution.”

“The majority of expunged convictions so far are misdemeanors. As of [last] Tuesday, courts have granted 6,121 expungements for misdemeanors related to nonviolent cannabis offenses that did not involve selling to minors or driving under the influence of cannabis. More than 1,200 felony convictions have also been expunged,” the publication reported.

Dan Viets, secretary of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws who helped author the state’s medical and recreational cannabis laws, told the Riverfront Times that the process is “going faster” than he expected.

That has become a recurring theme for the Show Me State’s rollout of the new marijuana law.

Legal recreational pot sales launched on February 6, which was earlier than anticipated.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported at the time that the nascent cannabis industry expected “that the licenses required to sell non-medical cannabis would not be issued by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services until [days later].” 

The launch of legal weed sales came only a month after the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services said that it was finalizing rules for the new adult-use cannabis program.

“Once rules are effective, DHSS will begin approving or denying requests from licensed medical marijuana facilities to convert to comprehensive facilities, which can serve both medical and adult-use consumers. After conversion, sales to adult-use consumers may begin as soon as comprehensive dispensary facilities are ready to commence operating under their new authority. Also per Amendment 3 to Article XIV, DHSS will begin accepting applications for consumer personal cultivation by Feb. 6. Once approved, this will allow authorized persons, who are at least 21 years of age, to grow plants for personal, non-commercial use within an enclosed locked facility at their residence,” the department said in a January bulletin.

But as in other states that have lifted the prohibition on cannabis use, Missouri’s new law aims to redress previous wrongs inflicted by anti-pot laws.

According to the Riverfront Times, the newly passed amendment “established deadlines for when sentencing courts must expunge certain crimes.”

“One deadline is fast approaching — sentencing courts must complete adjudication for misdemeanors of people currently in prison or jail by March 8. But most deadlines to expunge other crimes are at least 3 1/2 months away,” the Times reported. “Circuit courts have until June 8 to order the expungement of criminal history records for all misdemeanor marijuana offenses of people no longer under the supervision of the Department of Corrections. And they have until December 8 to expunge criminal histories of people who already completed their sentences for felony marijuana offenses that are no longer crimes.”

“Questions about how Missouri’s court system could sustain the expected influx of expungement requests circulated before Amendment 3’s passage in November. In October, the Missouri Supreme Court requested almost $7 million to cover the cost of erasing eligible marijuana convictions. The Missouri Office of State Courts Administration also submitted a supplemental budget request asking for $2.5 million to cover clerks’ overtime and hire additional information technology staffers,” the publication continued. 

The post Over 7,500 Pot Convictions Expunged in Missouri appeared first on High Times.

from The Latest Marijuana News Today | HighTimes Magazine https://ift.tt/c01XgJo
via IFTTT

Sonoma, California Ease Tax Burden for County Weed Farmers

Officials in Sonoma, California moved this week to provide tax relief to the area’s cannabis cultivators, another decision driven by the continued economic struggles of the state’s legal marijuana industry.

North Bay Business Journal reports that the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors “voted 4 to 1 on Tuesday to change how the tax on cannabis cultivation is set, lowering the amount some growers will pay while raising it for others,” making it so that “cannabis growers in the county’s jurisdiction will be taxed based on which of the size of their operations categorized into three different methods, calculated on a gross receipt tax rate of 2.5%.”

The change will take effect in July, per the Journal, which noted that cannabis growers “will pay [a] rate of $0.75 per square foot for outdoor operations; $12.50 per square foot for indoor cultivation, and $3 per square foot for mixed-light cultivation where a combination of artificial and natural light is deployed.”

This week’s vote comes almost a year after the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors slashed cannabis cultivation taxes by nearly 50%.

James Gore, the chair of the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors, told High Times last March why he advocated for the new tax alignment. 

“This tax reduction is in line with the market impacts that cannabis producers are encountering right now with a precipitous drop in wholesale price-per-pound,” Gore said at the time. “The reason that this was justified, merited, warranted is that our cannabis tax, like many other jurisdictions, was based on coverage—square feet. It was intended to be one and 5% of gross receipts, but when you have a drop in wholesale price, and you’re still taxing based on square footage, all of a sudden that potential 3-5% grows into not just 15 or 20—but upwards of that.”

Gore explained that the previous “tax policy did not fit the scenario of what was going on.”

“It was ultimately voted on 5-0 but there was a lot of dispute in the discussion. There were some who didn’t want to back off of the tax,” Gore said. “In the meantime, we’re going to be moving into a gross receipts model. So it will take us a while to settle on how to do that effectively. So that means, as it should, that it fluctuates up and down with market conditions. That is the ultimate goal.”

“We were putting people out of business with our policy, so this is the right thing to do,” he continued. “The reduced cultivation tax rates are needed to account for changes in the market and our Board’s policy direction. The revenue surplus in our cannabis program will support operational costs for two years as we transition to a new tax model and policy framework. We’re committed to getting this issue right for Sonoma County, and that means continuing to work between neighborhoods and industry advocates, learning from other counties, and finding local solutions that are fair and sustainable for both communities and the environment.” 

This week’s vote by the board was in the same spirit, with the North Bay Journal reporting that the move came “after months of heavy pressure from cannabis industry representatives, who have complained that layers of local and state taxes have hampered businesses in California’s legalized market.”

Legal cannabis industries across the country have fallen on hard times, as customers increasingly turn to the illicit market for cheaper prices, while growers and operators participating in state-sanctioned programs are often burdened with onerous taxes and regulations.

A survey last year from the National Cannabis Industry Association found that only 37% of cannabis operators nationwide are profitable. In California, it was only 26%.

The post Sonoma, California Ease Tax Burden for County Weed Farmers appeared first on High Times.

from The Latest Marijuana News Today | HighTimes Magazine https://ift.tt/RbZLBCm
via IFTTT

Michigan Cannabis Market Nets $60M Windfall for Local Governments

Tens of millions of dollars have been doled out to local governments across Michigan as a result of the state’s cannabis industry. 

FOX 2 Detroit reports that the state sent out nearly $60 million to counties and local governments.

“Local governments that have approved the recreational sale of weed in their county, city, village, or township will see approximately $51,800 for every retail store and micro-business that it’s handed out licenses to,” the station says.

According to FOX 2 Detroit, “Only 30% of total adult-use sales go to local governments, with the other 70% going to schools and roads. When contributions from last year are paired next to figures from 2021 and 2020, they show an industry that shows no signs of slowing down.”

Voters in the state legalized adult-use cannabis in 2018, when they approved Proposal 1. 

That initiative made it legal for adults 21 and older to toke up, and cleared the way for a regulated cannabis market that launched in 2019. 

But despite strong sales numbers, Michigan, like other regulated cannabis markets, has become oversupplied with pot.

Politico reported last year that the “number of cannabis grow operations serving the state’s recreational market has almost doubled in the past year,” and that the “number of active marijuana plants now exceeds 1.2 million, roughly six times the volume seen in 2020.”

“Michigan has way too much weed,” Politico said then.

“By one estimate, Michigan has enough cultivation capacity to supply three times as much weed as the state’s consumers are buying — and that doesn’t include the huge illegal market that by all accounts commands a large share of sales.”

That, according to Politico, makes Michigan “emblematic of what’s been happening across the country all year — and why the industry’s been in a funk even as legalization spreads: Ill-fated hopes that a Democratic-controlled Washington might loosen decades-old restrictions on the drug have given way to a market glut and plummeting prices that have put scores of businesses at risk of collapse.”

But that is not to say that Michigan’s recreational cannabis industry hasn’t experienced growth.

As FOX 2 Detroit noted, “224 municipalities had registered 1,148 business licenses” last year. That’s up from 163 municipalities and 748 licenses in 2021, and 104 municipalities and 356 licenses in 2020. 

The station has more details on the state’s latest cannabis sales figures:

“The latest figures come from the Michigan Department of Treasury which reported $198.4 million in revenue from recreational pot last year. Another $69.4 million will go to School Aid Fund, while $69.4 million will go to the transportation fund. In total, $1.8 billion in sales from weed came last year. To put that in context, there were $341 million in total sales in 2020. In 2021, the state reported $1.1 billion in sales.”

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, supported Proposal 1.

Late last year, Whitmer vetoed several Republican-sponsored bills that, among other things, aimed to ease access to the state’s medical cannabis program, which began in 2008, for both patients and prospective operators.

In her veto message, Whitmer said that the proposals were passed hastily by lawmakers and required closer examination.

“I look forward to working with the new Legislature in January on priorities that will continue our economic momentum, help lower costs, and expand education supports for Michigan students. It is time to be serious about solving problems and getting things done that will make working families’ lives better right now,” Whitmer said at the time.

The post Michigan Cannabis Market Nets $60M Windfall for Local Governments appeared first on High Times.

from The Latest Marijuana News Today | HighTimes Magazine https://ift.tt/BsXjihK
via IFTTT

North Carolina Senate Approves Medical Pot Bill

The North Carolina Senate this week approved a bill to legalize marijuana, bringing the measure one step away from heading to the state House of Representatives for consideration. The bill, titled the North Carolina Compassionate Care Act (Senate Bill 3), passed handily with little debate in the state Senate on Tuesday by a vote of 36-10. The bipartisan bill was introduced on January 25 by Republican Senators Bill Rabon and Michael Lee and Democratic Senator Paul Lowe. 

“The purpose of the bill is to allow for tightly regulated use of medical cannabis, only by those with debilitating illnesses,” Rabon said on the Senate floor before Tuesday’s vote. 

“The recreational sale or use of marijuana remains, under this legislation, illegal,” he added.

If signed into law, the bill would legalize the medicinal use of cannabis for patients with one or more specified qualifying serious medical conditions such as cancer, ALS, Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and others. Unlike the more comprehensive medical marijuana programs in many other states, however, the bill does not legalize the use of medical marijuana by patients diagnosed with chronic pain.

Before the bill was approved last week by the Senate Judiciary Committee, the sponsors of the bill emphasized that the measure does not legalize recreational marijuana. Instead, the intent of the legislation “is to only make changes to existing state law that are necessary to protect patients and their doctors from criminal and civil penalties and would not intend to change current civil and criminal laws for the use of non-medical marijuana,” Rabon told reporters on February 21.

Under the bill, patients with a qualifying “debilitating medical condition” would be allowed to use medical marijuana. The bill permits the smoking and vaping of medical cannabis by patients whose doctors have recommended a specific form and dosage of medical marijuana. Physicians would be required to review a patient’s continued eligibility for the medical marijuana program annually. Smoking medical cannabis in public or near schools and churches would not be legal under the measure.

The bill requires patients and qualified caregivers to obtain a medical marijuana identification card from the state. The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services would be responsible for creating “a secure, confidential, electronic database containing information about qualified patients, designated caregivers, and physicians,” according to the text of the measure. The bill also creates an 11-member advisory panel appointed by the governor and lawmakers to review proposals for new qualifying medical conditions.

North Carolina Bill Establishes Oversight Commission

Additionally, the legislation establishes a Medical Cannabis Production Commission to oversee medical cannabis producers and ensure a sufficient supply of medical marijuana is produced for the state’s registered patients. The legislation authorizes the licensing of up to 10 businesses to grow, process, and sell cannabis, and permits each producer to operate up to eight medical marijuana dispensaries. Under the bill, the state would levy a 10% tax on the monthly revenue of each medicinal cannabis producer. The bill also requires regulators to establish a tracking system to monitor the production, movement, and sale of cannabis products from cultivator to consumer. 

“Those suppliers must meet strict requirements for how to locate and operate their facilities, how to grow their cannabis and how to package and sell their inventory,” Rabon said on the Senate floor. “They must track every product from seed to sale.”

Only one lawmaker, Republican Senator Jim Burgin, spoke against the measure on Tuesday, saying that “marijuana is not medicine” and has not been approved for medicinal use by the federal government. 

“It’s bad for kids,” Burgin said. ”I think this bill sets up big government, and I think it can easily be changed to legalize marijuana” for recreational use, he added.

Senate leader Phil Berger, one of the 16 Republicans who voted for the measure, praised Rabon and the other sponsors of the bill for their work to gain consensus among their colleagues before the bill came up for a vote by the full Senate.

“The lack of debate on the floor really is a reflection on how much work Senator Rabon and the other sponsors have done over the past two years in just making people aware of what the bill does, answering questions, modifying the language,” Berger said.

Senate Bill 3 still faces one more vote in the North Carolina Senate before heading to the state House of Representatives for consideration. Republican House Speaker Tim Moore said the bill has some support in the House, according to a report from the Associated Press. If passed by both chambers of the legislature, the bill would head to the desk of Democratic Governor Roy Cooper, who has indicated support for legalizing medical marijuana and decriminalizing possession of small amounts of cannabis by adults.

The post North Carolina Senate Approves Medical Pot Bill appeared first on High Times.

from The Latest Marijuana News Today | HighTimes Magazine https://ift.tt/Cg7i4vn
via IFTTT

$2.5M Fund To Assist Small Farmers in Humboldt, Trinity Counties Unveiled

Aid is on the way for struggling farmers in two of the Emerald Triangle’s three counties, with funding available to help improve drought resilience and licensing compliance.

Cannabis for Conservation (CFC), a Humboldt County, California-based 501(c)(3) environmental nonprofit, announced $2.5 million in grant funds to assist small cannabis farmers through the California Department of Fish & Wildlife’s Cannabis Restoration Grant Program via the Qualified Cultivator Funding Opportunity, according to a Feb. 28 press release.  

Small farmers in the Emerald Triangle, an area where the economy is built on cannabis farming, have been “pushed to the brink” due to the impact of legalization, Cal Matters reports. It’s a region with over a quarter million people, and nearly everyone living in the region is either directly or indirectly reliant on cannabis. Cannabis has been the area’s staple crop since the ‘70s, with some farms in operation for generations. The rollout of grant funding couldn’t be more urgent, according to locals.

The two grants that were announced—Implementing Drought Resilience Strategies on Humboldt County Cannabis Farms and Provisional to Annual License Transitions for Trinity County Cultivators—will collectively assist 89 farms across eight priority watersheds with environmental work. 

“We see a great opportunity for conservation with this nascent industry, especially given that many farmers own large tracts of land in one of the most biodiverse ecoregions on the planet,” said Jackee Riccio, the co-founder and executive director of CFC.

CFC’s Drought Resilience Program aims to improve sustainable water consumption on some 17 farms. They will do this by installing rainwater catchment systems, increasing water storage capacity, and/or hardening and improving irrigation. This, they believe, will improve on-farm drought resilience and reduce direct impacts to water sources during low-flow periods. 

According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), “the frequency, intensity, and duration of drought events” is increasing at rates not seen before. 

The point of this isn’t to transform small farms into monopolies, however: CFC stipulates that none of these water improvements will be used to increase cultivation footprints, farm size, or number of licenses, but rather reduce or eliminate extraction from water resources during dry periods and in some cases, convert farms to 100% water storage.

The Provisional to Annual License Program, on the other hand, aims to assist 72 Trinity cultivators in achieving an annual County and Department of Cannabis Control (DCC) license. The grant aims to provide professional help to small farmers to finalize annual licenses, including “completing documentation for California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) compliance and Special-Status Species Mitigation and allow for a Technical Advisory Committee between CDFW, CFC, and the county to quickly resolve licensing obstacles that arise.”

CEQA is a California law dating back to 1970 that requires environmental review of proposed cultivation projects. All annual state cannabis licenses must comply with CEQA. The DCC may only issue an annual license once a project complies with CEQA. In addition, DCC has requirements for standard operating procedures, training employees, and how operations must be set up. 

CFC’s applied conservation approach focuses on collaborative, on-farm research, biodiversity enhancements, and environmental education. 

The goal is to bring together scientists and farmers to implement peer-reviewed conservation practices, with benefits provided to wildlife, land, and water. 

“Working with farmers and transforming monocultures into functional agroecosystems is a priority strategy among conservationists globally and we’re doing our part in that here, in the heart of cannabis country to return to the back-to-the-land values that this industry was born from,” Riccio added.

The post $2.5M Fund To Assist Small Farmers in Humboldt, Trinity Counties Unveiled appeared first on High Times.

from The Latest Marijuana News Today | HighTimes Magazine https://ift.tt/f3vPjCb
via IFTTT