LANCASTER, Pa. (WHTM) - A majority of Pennsylvania voters support legalizing marijuana for recreational use, according to a new poll.

The Franklin and Marshall College poll released Thursday found 59 percent of registered voters believe marijuana should be legal.

When the question was first asked by F&M pollsters in May 2006, legal cannabis had the support of only about 22 percent of voters, the college's Center for Opinion Research said in its summary of findings.

Independents (77 percent) and Democrats (71 percent) were more likely to support marijuana legalization than Republicans (39 percent), and support tends to decline with age.

Read more

MORGANTOWN — Gov. Jim Justice vetoed a bill aimed at paving the way for medical cannabis businesses to set up in West Virginia.

RELATED: Bill to Bring Medical Marijuana Businesses to West Virginia Heads to Governor

The bill’s lead sponsor is disappointed and sees the veto as a setback for the program set to launch July 1.

But a fix may be in the works for the special session set to resume in May.

The bill is HB 2079. Its chief goal was to allow vertical integration of medical cannabis businesses. Current law prohibits cannabis growers or processors from operating dispensaries. The bill would have allowed one company to operate all three.

Read more

A bill to legalize recreational marijuana use for Montanans 18 and older failed to advance Thursday from a state House committee.

Rep. Tom Winter, D-Missoula, tried to assure the House Taxation committee that his House Bill 770 served as a reaction to, not a model of, mistakes made in other states that have legalized recreational marijuana. By his own estimate, Winter said, the bill would bring Montana $35 million to $55 million in annual revenue with a 32 percent tax on retail marijuana sales.

In opposing the bill, Sgt. Kurt Sager and Lt. Jim Sanderson of the Montana Highway Patrol relied on statistics from recent impact reports that found increased traffic deaths and hospitalizations in Colorado related to marijuana after it was legalized for recreational use in that state.

Read more

STONY BROOK, N.Y. & PANAMA CITY--(BUSINESS WIRE)--PRESS RELEASE--Applied DNA Sciences Inc., a PCR-based DNA manufacturing company for product authenticity and traceability solutions, and TheraCann International Benchmark Corporation, a global full-service legal cannabis and hemp consultancy, have announced that they have entered into an exclusive licensing and cooperation agreement that grants TheraCann’s wholly-owned subsidiary, ETCH BioTrace, S.A., the use of Applied DNA’s CertainT supply chain integrity platform technology within the global legal cannabis and hemp markets. Under the terms of the Agreement, a $5 million up-front licensing fee is payable to Applied DNA over a four-month period beginning on or before April 15, 2019, and completed by October 15, 2019.

Pursuant to the agreement, Applied DNA will be the exclusive supplier of molecular tags (provided as SigNature), molecular tag application systems and molecular tag authentication systems for TheraCann’s ETCH biotrace seed-to-sale-tracking system. The parties will jointly market and sell the system, with a profit share after the recoupment of initial investments. The agreement also calls for specific annual minimum payment milestones to Applied DNA, starting in year two, and scaling from $7M in year three to $20M in year fifteen.

“This agreement--containing the largest payment transaction in our company history--demonstrates further validation of our DNA technology platform and its commercialization across industries where compliance, control and tracking are essential to marketplace safety and security,” stated Dr. James A. Hayward, president and CEO of Applied DNA. “The impact on our balance sheet is beneficial and will allow us to respond to the requests for pre-commercial pilots we have already received. We believe the growing demand for legalized cannabis is driving the creation of the industry’s global supply chains and is accelerating the need for solutions to secure and validate them from inception through consumption, destruction and/or recall. Powered by our CertainT platform, TheraCann’s ETCH biotrace system can offer the global legal cannabis and hemp industry the unparalleled ability to ensure true authentication and provenance verification. Given TheraCann’s growing standing in the industry, and in conjunction with TheraCann’s Benchmark SOLUTION, full turn-key cannabis project offering, we believe that this agreement effectively places Applied DNA at the heart of a fast-growing industry.”

Jason Warnock, CEO of TheraCann International, stated, “The marketplace has responded with gusto to our shared ETCH biotrace platform. Multiple letters of intent from numerous countries that wish to protect their licensed cannabis supply chain to maximize international export opportunities already anticipate commercial trials, and quotations are with customers for large scale supply.”