Massachusetts Lawmakers Voice Opposition to Cannabis Delivery Regulations
A bipartisan group of legislators have asked the Cannabis Control Commission to eliminate the wholesale delivery license type, leaving only the limited delivery license.
A bipartisan group of Massachusetts lawmakers has voiced opposition to the Cannabis Control Commission’s (CCC) cannabis delivery regulations, according to a MassLive.com report.
The draft regulations, which were established last month, would create two types of delivery licenses—a “limited delivery license,” which would allow a licensee to charge a fee to deliver from licensed cannabis dispensaries, and a “wholesale delivery license,” which would allow a licensee to buy cannabis wholesale from licensed cultivators and manufacturers, store it in a warehouse and sell it to consumers.
Nineteen state lawmakers drafted a letter to the CCC last week, indicating that they “believe that the wholesale delivery license was not contemplated, nor supported, by the enabling legislation,” MassLive.com reported.
The lawmakers asked the CCC to reconsider its final vote on the proposed delivery regulations, which is expected to take place Oct. 20, according to the news outlet.
Photo courtesy of Canndescent
Canndescent CEO Adrian Sedlin on Justice Joints Partnership with Last Prisoner Project
A commitment to core values such as “excellence” and “gratitude” prompted the California cultivator to donate 100% of profits from Justice Joints to cannabis prisoner release, reentry and expungement.
This year, Canndescent’s leadership decided to address cannabis incarceration and its disproportionate effects on black and brown people. To determine how best to do that, the company looked within.
Adrian Sedlin, founder and CEO of the California cultivator, said the May 25 death of George Floyd was “a flashpoint” to him and the business, as it was to many people, of the terrors of racial injustice and police brutality. Individuals, businesses and organizations in the cannabis industry have acknowledged that they benefit from legalization while minorities continue to be disproportionately incarcerated for marijuana convictions.
“We had a very long internal conversation, and sometimes there were tears in the room, to be honest, where people want[ed] us to act faster and [felt] like we have to do something,” Sedlin recalled to Cannabis Business Times and Cannabis Dispensary.
At Canndescent, that flashpoint became a call to #sparkchange. The company’s core values, such as “excellence,” “gratitude” and “boldness” have enabled it to become a formidable player in the legal cannabis market. In 2020, they’ve led the company to launch Justice Joints, a preroll collaboration with the Last Prisoner Project (LPP). All profits from the product line of sativa, indica and hybrid prerolls will fund LPP’s efforts of prisoner release, reentry into society and criminal record expungement.
With an internal “on-shelf” date of Oct. 27, Sedlin said Canndescent’s distribution team may start transporting Justice Joints to California dispensaries as soon as Oct. 28. About 30 to 40 dispensaries will begin selling the product in early- or mid-November. Six to nine months afterward, Sedlin anticipates selling the product to approximately 200 stores.
Justice Joints’ text-heavy packaging will educate and remind consumers—and dispensary managers and employees—that there are 40,000 people incarcerated for charges related to cannabis, that 10% of cannabis business owners are people of color and that people are arrested for cannabis in the U.S. “every 48 seconds.”
Not only did the company’s decision to launch Justice Joints align with its core values, but also its mission to “empower consumers to turn down the noise, unlock the moment and transform their lives with exceptional cannabis products,” as Sedlin (and the business’s website, similarly) put it.
“Our job is to build solutions and turn down the noise, and for us, this was a way to do it,” he said. “This was a way for us to do something really constructive that’s lasting and meaningful. So that was the standard.” If Canndescent was to reduce people’s anxieties rather than inflame them, giving a one-time donation or smaller portions of proceeds wouldn’t be enough. In addition, the company wanted to continually express its gratitude to the people who led the way for the cannabis industry, including those who have been imprisoned.
Photo courtesy of Canndescent
Over the summer of 2020, Sedlin said he reached out to the Last Prisoner Project founder Steve DeAngelo (also the co-founder and chairman emeritus of Harborside) about working together.
“We have three long-term gifting platforms in mind for Justice Joints,” Sedlin said. “But expungement, release and reentry for nonviolent cannabis prisoners was the first of the three. And Steve and the Last Prisoner Project became the logical next call.” (Sedlin said the other two platforms would be working with historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) to establish curricula to encourage graduates to enter the cannabis industry, and issuing grants to increase the equity of Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) in the industry.)
Registered as a 501(c)(3) in 2019, the Last Prisoner Project has been growing since. It works in different capacities with cannabis businessesacross the U.S., as well as musicians such as Stephen and Damian Marley and Rebelution’s Eric Rachmany, and started a letter-writing program.
Addressing the partnership with Canndescent in a statement provided to CBT and CD, Mary Bailey, managing director of LPP, said:
“Last Prisoner Project is thrilled about the launch of Justice Joints and we simply can't thank Canndescent enough for the support. Not only will Justice Joints raise much needed funding to support criminal justice reform in the cannabis space, but it also brings awareness to consumers about this important issue. Most Americans don't realize that there are still over 40,000 people incarcerated for cannabis in our country.”
Buying In
Prior to Justice Joints, Canndescent ran three brands: Candescent, goodbrands and Baker’s Cannabis Co., Sedlin said. A fourth made sense with Justice Joints because employees would knowingly be spending a portion of their time serving the cause, and it would become “hardwired” into the company. With the new brand, Sedlin said, employees can say, “‘We grow cannabis for a living. We distribute cannabis for a living. Let’s make this part of our daily exercise as professionals.’”
The company will negotiate with suppliers on costs associated with Justice Joints, Sedlin said. “We’re going to try to get them to lower their cost structure to Justice Joints. Charge us what you will for Canndescent and our other brands, but will they lower the cost structure knowing 100% of what we don't spend on them goes to the charity?”
When asked if other cannabis companies should advocate for prisoner release, reentry and expungement, Sedlin said there are other urgent problems in the U.S. and world as well, like climate change and sex trafficking, and he wouldn’t judge companies for addressing those issues. Before that, though, he said companies should “build a great organization.” He explained:
“The cannabis industry is really hard. Lots of people lost a lot of money trying to build companies. But if company is at a point where they're beginning to become more successful, as traditionally defined in thebusiness community, I'd say, ‘It's time to pick up an axe and chop some wood off of something.’ It's sort of the culture of cannabis. We're a space of fighters and advocates, so let’s have a whole industry fight for better things.”
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Amicus Briefs Filed in Support of Dr. Sue Sisley’s Petition to Facilitate Medical Cannabis Research for Veterans with PTSD
Sisley is petitioning the Ninth Circuit to rule that the DEA’s five-part test to assess if a drug has medical use and can be rescheduled is arbitrary and capricious.
Several organizations have filed amicus briefs in support of Dr. Sue Sisley, who is petitioning the Ninth Circuit to rule that the DEA’s five-part test to assess if a drug has medical use and can be rescheduled is arbitrary and capricious.
Rice University’s Baker Institute, the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) and several doctors filed the amicus briefs Oct. 6 in support of Sisley’s petition, which ultimately seeks to facilitate medical cannabis research for veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
The briefs urge the court to grant Sisley’s Petition for Review, which would allow researchers to study the effects of cannabis as a treatment for PTSD.
Cannabis has long been classified as a Schedule I substance under the Controlled Substances Act, which severely limits researchers’ ability to access cannabis for clinical trials.
“The Veterans Administration can’t do anything with medical marijuana because it’s a Schedule I substance, [and] Sue Sisley and her company couldn’t go and get marijuana for her clinical trial from anyone other than a government-authorized supplier because it is a Schedule I drug,” Susman Godfrey attorney Erica Harris, who represented IAVA in its amicus brief in support of Sisley’s petition, told Cannabis Business Times and Cannabis Dispensary.
Sisley and other researchers have been critical of the quality of the medical cannabis produced by the University of Mississippi, the only organization licensed to grow cannabis for medical research in the U.S.
The DEA announced in August 2016 that it would begin accepting new cultivation license applications and received 25 applications in the year following the announcement, but the agency has not approved or denied a single one.
Following Sisley’s lawsuit, a federal court ordered the DEA to explain why it has not responded to the applications, and the agency announced in August 2019 that it would take steps to approve additional cultivation licenses from the pool of applications that have been pending since 2016.
In October 2019, a federal court dismissed Sisley’s lawsuit after a judge ruled that the DEA’s announcement made the case moot.
Sisley’s new petition comes after the DEA denied a veteran’s request to reschedule cannabis in an effort to advance research on medical cannabis and PTSD. While this most recent unsuccessful request to reschedule cannabis is certainly not the first, Harris said Sisley’s petition likely stems from recent changes to the Chevron Deference Standard for Administrative Rulings.
“Basically, they’ve ordered the DEA to re-assess it because it makes no sense what they’re doing,” Harris said. “There are 33 states and all these territories that are using medical marijuana. There’s all this evidence in literature saying medical marijuana can have all these different medical uses, and it doesn’t make sense to keep it on a Schedule I status because that prevents all sorts of studies and good things from happening to better understand this drug.”
The IAVA represents more than 400,000 veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and its main priority is to reduce the veteran suicide rate, Harris said.
“They’ve worked very hard and they’ve obtained legislation in prior years to prioritize reducing veteran suicide and to get them more resources, but nothing is helping in the sense that the veteran suicide rate keeps going up,” she said.
There are only two drugs authorized by the FDA to treat PTSD, Harris said, and neither gives relief to a sizeable percentage of the veteran population suffering from PTSD. The IAVA, therefore, wants medical cannabis to be studied as a potential treatment, and for it to be covered by veterans’ benefits.
“IAVA is not taking a position on whether medical marijuana should be allowed as treatment for PTSD or not,” Harris said. “IAVA’s position is, we need clinical studies of what’s on the market to know whether that’s safe and effective for the long-term for the treatment of our veterans because if it’s not, they should be able to know that and not use it, and doctors should stop prescribing it. And if it is, that’s a life-saving treatment because you can control the symptoms of PTSD and decrease the suicide rate.”
The Ninth Circuit must decide whether they will hear oral arguments in the case, and if not, Harris said they will issue an opinion.
If the court orders the DEA to re-assess cannabis’s classification as a Schedule I drug, she said it could have a tremendous impact on the industry, as well as veterans suffering from PTSD.
“If marijuana is removed from Schedule I and moved to a different schedule, it will open up the ability of the Veterans Administration and other groups of scientists, like Sisley’s organization and others, to perform clinical studies on the type of marijuana that is prescribed legally by doctors in states where it’s legally prescribed and the type of marijuana people buy at their local dispensary in the states and territories where it’s legal,” Harris said. “If that evidence shows that medical marijuana is an effective treatment for the symptoms of PTSD, that would be life-changing for these veterans, a certain percentage of whom come back from our wars with this syndrome.”
The federal government has indicated that preventing veteran suicide is one of the nation’s highest priorities, she added, and while Congress has passed legislation saying it is important to conduct clinical studies on potential treatments for PTSD, the DEA has consistently said it will not move cannabis from Schedule I.
“It’s so inconsistent with what they’re saying we need to prioritize as a nation, and it’s so detrimental to a population to which the country owes a debt,” Harris said. “I’m very hopeful that the petition is granted and marijuana is rescheduled, and over the course of the next 10 years, we see the science come out."
Analysis: If Texas Legalizes Cannabis, It Could Collect More Than Half a Billion Dollars Per Year in New Tax Revenue
Establishing a regulated cannabis market could also create tens of thousands of new jobs and save taxpayers $311 million annually in criminal justice costs, according to an economic analysis by Vicente Sederberg LLP.
AUSTIN — PRESS RELEASE — Texas could collect more than half a billion dollars per year in new tax revenue and create upwards of 40,000 new jobs if it legalizes and regulates cannabis for adult use, according to an economic analysis released Oct. 19 by Vicente Sederberg LLP, a national firm specializing in cannabis law and policy. The state could also save millions of taxpayer dollars per year in criminal justice costs.
"States across the country are seeing the benefits of legalizing and regulating cannabis," said Shawn Hauser, a partner at Vicente Sederberg who heads the firm's Austin office. "It is inspiring lawmakers in prohibition states to reexamine the efficacy and costs of their current policies and take a closer look at the alternatives. The goal of this report is to provide a snapshot of the economic benefits Texas would experience if it started treating cannabis more like alcohol for adults 21 years of age and older."
The report — which can be viewed and downloaded here— includes the following key findings:
There are more than 1.5 million adults 21 years of age and older in Texas who consume cannabis on a monthly basis. If the state regulated cannabis for adult use, it would see an estimated $2.7 billion per year in cannabis sales.
If Texas taxed adult cannabis sales at the same rate as Colorado, it would generate more than $1.1 billion dollars per biennium in new state revenue. It could also raise an additional $10 million per year through a modest business license fee, which would help offset the costs of administering the regulatory program.
A regulated adult-use cannabis market in Texas would result in hundreds of new businesses, creating an estimated 20,000-40,000 direct jobs in the cannabis industry, as well as tens of thousands of indirect and induced jobs.
Ending misdemeanor arrests and prosecutions for low-level cannabis possession offenses in Texas would save the state an estimated $311 million per year.
"A regulated cannabis market would be an economic boon for the Lonestar State," Hauser said. "Hundreds of millions of dollars in new tax revenue and tens of thousands of new jobs would be especially helpful in overcoming the losses stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. Texas is leaving an enormous amount of money on the table by keeping cannabis illegal."
The stakes are particularly high in Texas due to its size and population, according to Dwight Clark, a senior policy analyst at Vicente Sederberg who previously worked in the Texas Legislature.
"There are well over a million adults in the state who regularly consume cannabis, so enforcement costs are substantial, to say the least," Clark said. "If cannabis were regulated, the revenue from license fees and taxes would easily cover the costs of administrating the system and enforcing regulations. Criminal justice resources could then be redirected toward other, more pressing matters. Plus there would be significant revenue left over that could be used to fund other programs and services."
The report was authored by Andrew Livingston, director of economics and research at Vicente Sederberg. Clark and the firm's policy consulting affiliate, VS Strategies, also contributed.
Vertosa Partners with Pabst Labs to Debut Pabst Blue Ribbon Cannabis-Infused Seltzer
The new THC beverage from the legacy beer brand, infused by Vertosa, is now available in California.
OAKLAND, CA (October 19, 2020) – PRESS RELEASE – Hemp and cannabis infusion technology company Vertosa has announced it has teamed with Pabst Labs, the newly formed licensed cannabis company producing ready-to-drink beverages under the iconic Pabst Blue Ribbon name, to develop and launch Pabst Blue Ribbon Cannabis Infused Seltzer. The new non-alcoholic THC beverage infused by Vertosa is now available in a select group of California dispensaries and direct to California consumers via shop.PabstLabs.com.
“We at Vertosa are absolutely thrilled to partner with the historic, legacy American beverage company that is Pabst Blue Ribbon on their Pabst Labs products as they embark on their journey into the cannabis industry,” said Vertosa Chief Innovation Officer Austin Stevenson. “But this is more than a major milestone for our two-year-old company; the launch of Pabst Blue Ribbon Cannabis Infused Seltzer takes the entire cannabis infused beverage market to a whole new level of household name status and accessibility, paving the way for more innovative infused beverages to reach wider audiences.”
Since its inception in 2018, the Oakland, Calif.-based company, which recently announced its expansion into Canada, has quickly become the go-to cannabis and hemp infusion partner for an ever-expanding roster of both mainstream and niche beverage brands from North America to the UK, including VitaCoco, Calexo, Lagunitas Hi-Fi Hops, Viv & Oak wine, and Soul Grind cold brew by Caliva. They currently infuse more than 100 hemp and cannabis products on the market, including two of the top three ready-to-drink brands in California. Vertosa’s team of scientists, led by CSO/Founder Dr. Harold Han, has designed emulsion systems for cannabinoids that are not only water-compatible, but taste great, are highly bioavailable and have a quick onset of less than 10 minutes.
Vertosa’s approach is never one-size-fits all. To infuse the Pabst Blue Ribbon Cannabis Seltzer, they worked diligently and closely with Pabst Labs for months to custom design an infusion solution to fit the PBR intended experience, including flavor, clarity, mouthfeel, stability and compatibility.
Each can of Pabst Blue Ribbon Cannabis Infused Seltzer features 5 mg THC, a responsible dosage designed to make it a go-to drink for both casual and experienced cannabis users. In addition, PBR Cannabis Infused Seltzer is alcohol-free, preservative-free and contains just 4 grams of sugar and 25 calories per can. Lemon Seltzer is the current flavor available, but additional flavors are already in development.
“Though this is a limited initial launch, we’ve had a really enthusiastic and positive response from dispensaries and customers, and are looking forward to a wider roll out in the coming months. For over 175 years the Blue Ribbon has connected fans across generations around its products, and we think customers, new and old, are going to love the chance to experiment with something different from a brand they trust,” said Pabst Labs Brand Manager Mark Faicol.
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Melissa Schiller
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