When Gov.-elect Ron DeSantis takes office next week, the road to marijuana legalization in Florida will begin. Two court appeals that could open up the market and the path to smoking cannabis may be undercut—and a petition drive to put recreational marijuana on the 2020 ballot will gain steam.
An appeals hearing is set for Monday on a decision by former Miami-Dade child advocate and current Tallahassee Circuit Court Judge Karen Gievers that would allow medicinal cannabis smoking in the state. Gievers ruled last June 5 that legislators violated the will of voters—71.5 percent of whom approved medicinal marijuana—by banning smokable cannabis. But in a court document, state House general counsel Adam Tanenbaum held out the "possibility" the Department of Health would remove itself from the case.
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Ailing Ohioans awaiting medical marijuana relief can circle Jan. 15 on their calendars--the latest estimate of when product will be on shelves.
Representatives from the state’s only fully licensed medical marijuana dispensary and testing lab each said Jan. 15 was around the time they expected to be up and running. Ohio’s medical marijuana program was supposed to be fully operational Sept. 8.
Twenty-one conditions can qualify someone for medical marijuana--from cancer to a spinal cord disease or injury.
This week, a business association called the Craft Cannabis Alliance started working with Oregon legislators to explore the possibility of cannabis exports to other legal-marijuana states, which could take effect by 2021. Elsewhere, in Michigan, more than 70 unlicensed medical marijuana dispensaries were closed after a state-imposed Dec. 31 licensing deadline.
Here, we’ve rounded up the 10 headlines you need to know before this week is over.
Federal: The newly legal hemp industry is indefinitely paused during the government shutdown, as the U.S. Department of Agriculture is unable to approve state hemp program regulations and the FBI is unable to conduct required background checks. At issue, on a political level, is whether President Trump will sign a spending bill that excludes funding for a U.S.-Mexico border wall. Read more
Oregon: Marijuana could take the next step toward joining pinot noir, craft beer and hazelnuts on Oregon's list of famous exports, under a proposal likely to go before state lawmakers in the new year. The Craft Cannabis Alliance, a business association led by founder and executive director Adam Smith, is working with legislators to let Oregon start exporting cannabis to other legal-marijuana states by 2021. Read more
Ohio: While the first legal sale of medical marijuana didn’t happen in 2018 as Ohio’s law allowed, officials say the slow-to-develop program is ready to deliver. CY+, a dispensary in Wintersville, received its certificate of operation last month, and another 55 dispensaries have provisional licenses. The first sales are tentatively planned for Jan. 15. Read more
At the tail end of 2018’s busy M&A season, Ohio-based Green Growth Brands launched a $2.1-billion (C$2.8-billion) bid to acquire Canadian cannabis producer Aphria Inc. The all-stock deal would provide Aphria shareholders with 1.5714 common shares of Green Growth in exchange for each Aphria share. Read more
Indiana: Gov. Eric Holcomb is not willing to consider marijuana legalization in Indiana. The Republican said he’s opposed to both medical and adult-use legalization because it’s still illegal at the federal level. Read more
Oklahoma: Oklahoma is allowing people who don't live in the state to apply for temporary medical marijuana licenses. This temporary license offers people with a valid marijuana license from another state to buy, use and even grow medical marijuana in Oklahoma. Read more
Michigan: Michigan forced more than 70 unlicensed medical marijuana dispensaries to close after a state-issued Dec. 31 licensing deadline, severing many patients’ access to their medication. The state will hold its next monthly licensing board meeting Jan. 16, where it will presumably issue more licenses, but patients who have been using dispensaries that have been shut down could be forced back to the illicit market for their medicine. Read more
At least 80 Michigan communities have banned or are moving to ban recreational marijuana retail stores and related businesses, a swift response from local governments in the month and a half since voters chose to legalize marijuana in Michigan. The Michigan Regulation and Taxation of Marihuana Act took effect Dec. 6. Read more
California: A federal judge has ruled that a group of Petaluma neighbors cannot sue a cannabis company and its lead grower under a federal racketeering and corruption law because bad odors and noise are nuisances that don’t cause the kind of measurable financial losses required to pursue the case. The Dec. 27 ruling halted what may have been the first attempt in California to use the civil portion of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, passed in 1970 to combat the mafia and organized crime, to stop marijuana cultivation since it was legalized for recreational use. Read more
Nevada: On Jan. 1, Nevada’s Marijuana Enforcement Division enacted a new regulation that requires all single-serving cannabis edibles and infused products be labeled with a THC stamp or mold in an effort to increase public safety. The stamp identifies a gummy or a baked good as a cannabis-infused product, safely separating it from non-cannabis-infused products. Read more
Euphoria Wellness' purchasing department is responsible for ensuring that all incoming products from vendors include the THC stamp.Photo courtesy of Euphoria Wellness
Nevada’s Cannabis Companies Embrace New THC Stamp Regulation
Wana Brands and Euphoria Wellness discuss their preparations for the new rule, which requires all cannabis edibles and infused products to display a stamp as of Jan. 1.
Cannabis manufacturers and dispensaries in Nevada will have one more regulation to pay attention to in the new year.
On Jan. 1, Nevada’s Marijuana Enforcement Division (MED) enacted a new regulation that requires all single-serving cannabis edibles and infused products be labeled with a THC stamp or mold in an effort to increase public safety.
Wana Brands, a Colorado-based edibles producer that works with licensed partners in Nevada, has ensured that its Nevada operations are producing molds with the specified THC symbol on them—a diamond that encloses the notations “!THC.”
And, overall, it hasn’t been a disruptive change, according to Nancy Whiteman, Wana Brands’ founder and CEO.
“It’s interesting,” she said. “We went through the same thing in Colorado about two years ago, and it was a key change because we had to change the whole way that we were manufacturing our products. However, our advantage in Nevada was that we were launching with [our licensed partner] Even right at the same time this was happening. So, we were able to plan for it right from the start, so there was no change to our manufacturing process due to that.”
For Euphoria Wellness, one of Nevada’s licensed dispensaries, its purchasing department is responsible for ensuring that all incoming products from vendors include the stamp, according to Managing Director Darlene Purdy. The dispensary has time to adjust, however, as most products currently on its shelves were made prior to the Jan. 1 deadline—only stock produced on or after Jan. 1 must have the new stamp.
“Out here, we have edibles inside of opaque bags, so you can’t see the edible when it comes in the door, so it’s caused us to change our processes a little bit to be able to get samples of the edibles ahead of time to make sure that they do have the stamp on them,” Purdy said. “As soon as the manufacturer date changes on the products, where they’ve actually produced the products after 1/1, that’s when we’ll start to see the products coming in the door that have the seals on them.”
Consumers and their purchasing habits should be unaffected by the change, Purdy added, as the stamp simply identifies a gummy or a baked good as a cannabis-infused product, safely separating it from non-cannabis-infused products.
“I think that any time you raise the level of safety, it’s going to help,” Purdy said. “I don’t know that there was a concern before … in the Nevada market, but just raising the level of safety is not going to hurt.”
“I don’t know that we’re fixing something that was actually a problem, to be honest with you, but why not?” Whiteman added. “It just adds one more level of awareness for the public that I don’t see any downside to it."
pozdeevvs/Adobe Stock
How the Government Shutdown is Hurting the U.S. Cannabis Industry
The newly legal hemp industry is indefinitely paused while Congress and President Trump sort out their issues.
U.S. hemp farmers eager to get to work in 2019 will have to wait: The federal government is currently shut down.
While the passage of 2018 Farm Bill and its hemp legalization provision was met with excitement, a now-routine political snafu has halted federal government operations and effectively blockaded the gateway to legal hemp cultivation.
Until the federal government reopens for business—until the U.S. Congress approves an appropriations bill—the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is unable to approve state hemp program regulations and the FBI is unable to conduct required background checks. This presents a problem for prospective hemp farmers.
“It could keep someone from getting their business underway,” Jack Wilbur, spokesman for the Utah Dept. of Agriculture and Food, told KUTV on Dec. 31.
Under provisions enacted by the 2014 Farm Bill, 40 states now regulate hemp cultivation. Moving forward now, the USDA reserves the authority to approve or reject those states’ (or commonwealths’) programs under the auspices of the 2018 Farm Bill. Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles submitted his commonwealth’s application to the USDA on Dec. 20, the day President Trump signed the agricultural legislation into law.
On Dec. 22, Congressional leaders reached an impasse, and the government shut down.
At issue, on a political level, is whether Trump will sign a spending bill that excludes funding for a U.S.-Mexico border wall, something that he’s been going on about for years now. Democrats have opposed the very idea. Republicans are more of a mixed bag, but one major undercurrent of Washington sentiment is summed up by what U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell’s spokesperson told the Washington Post this week: “It’s simple: The Senate is not going to send something to the president that he won’t sign.”
All of which is to say that it might be a while before this current shutdown is resolved. In characteristic verbiage, Trump told reporters on Jan. 2 that he’s intent on stalling government operations until he secures funding for the wall. When asked how long he’s willing to go: “As long as it takes,” he said. “I mean, look, I’m prepared. I think the people of this country think I am right. Again, I could have had a lot easier presidency by doing nothing, but I’m here. I want to do it right.”
Magdalena Juillard/Adobe Stock
Quarles and his regulatory counterparts in other states doubtlessly want to see some movement, for the sake of this nascent industry. “Kentucky’s regulatory framework perfectly aligns with the requirements spelled out in the farm bill,” Quarles said when he submitted Kentucky’s paperwork. “Hemp growers, processors, and manufacturers deserve swift action so they can proceed with confidence.”
Stuart Titus, CEO of Medical Marijuana Inc., which manufactures hemp-derived CBD products, has been sourcing most of his company’s product from European farms and processors. Like many other medical cannabis executives (and like many agricultural commissioners, for that matter), Titus sees the potential in legal hemp market in the U.S. as quite promising.
“At this time, obviously, now we’re looking to add on some U.S.-based production, and this is quite exciting for us,” he told Cannabis Business Times. “We see as much as 60 million acres of U.S. farmland [that] could be grown with hemp. For many farmers, it’s a great rotational crop. … Hemp is very robust, very hearty.”
But before the industry really takes off, there’s governmental oversight to contend with—and it’s not just the USDA that hemp farmers will confront in this newly legal regime.
As many states already insist in their hemp pilot programs, all hemp farmers—in fact, all “personnel involved in the cultivation of the crop,” according to Pennsylvania’s Department of Agriculture, for instance—must submit to an FBI background check.
This new provision was included in the federal legalization of hemp to accommodate broader congressional debate over criminal justice elements of the legislation. The argument over whether convicted felons would be allowed to participate in the hemp industry at all dissolved into last-minute compromises in December, which will now permit convicted felons to enter the hemp industry 10 years after their conviction (as opposed to never).
The FBI background check is where that will be settled.
For now, though, nobody is participating in the country’s newest legal industry. In the early days of January, industry stakeholders are hoping that this shutdown is but a congressional blip on the history of U.S. hemp.
“I don’t think too many farmers are going to be planting much before the April-May time period, so it’s not catastrophic,” Titus said, “but certainly we’d like to get this year’s crop under way, and a very good, robust reception for the farmers who do choose to plant hemp.”
Elsewhere, in the broader medical marijuana industry, these periodic federal government shutdowns keep businesses worried for other reasons.
Medical marijuana businesses have been protected through amendments to short-term spending bills since 2014, including the most recent Joyce Amendment (which carried over earlier iterations of the Rohrabacher-Blumenauer amendment) last summer.
While the federal government remains without an appropriations bill on Trump’s desk, it also remains without the Joyce Amendment language. The legislative rider has prohibited the U.S. Department of Justice from spending money on medical cannabis prosecutions. At the moment, and anytime the federal government passes into shut-down mode, those protections for medical cannabis businesses and patients are gone.
Fears of a crackdown are misplaced, however.
"Almost everything dealing with regulations and management of the medical cannabis and adult use industries is really in the hands of the states, so a federal shutdown would be an inconvenience for many, but I don’t expect it would impact operations or access," Chris Lindsey, Senior Legislative Counsel for the Marijuana Policy Project, toldCivilized late last year. "If anything, it might result in less federal interest in those that are participating. Because, if anything, a government shutdown would lead to less resources to go after individuals or businesses."
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Melissa Schiller
Eric Sandy
